It’s National Ride Your Bike to Work Day!
Riding your bike to work has lots of benefits:
- It’s cheaper than driving (gas prices are out of control);
- It helps keep you healthy (something that is increasingly important); and
- It looks cool (trust me on this, my kids think biking commuters are awesome).
You may even get a federal income tax benefit out of it.
Under the Tax Code, your employer can provide to you – tax-free – a de minimis transportation benefit. Yes, I know I’ve written before that de minimis is Latin for “you’re not getting a real perk” but I’m kidding: it’s really Latin for “of minimum importance” or “trifling” which, quite frankly, sounds worse. But if your employer provides a local transportation benefit that has so little value that accounting for it would be administratively impractical, the IRS allows you to exclude it from your income.
One of those de minimis transportation benefits is the qualified bicycle commuting reimbursement. For any calendar year, you can exclude any reimbursement provided to you by your employer for the purchase of a bicycle and bicycle improvements, repair and storage so long as the bicycle is regularly used for travel between your residence and place of employment.
The amount of the exclusion is figured by month. For 2012, the exclusion is $20 multiplied by the number of qualified bicycle commuting months. A qualified bicycle commuting month is any month that you regularly use the bicycle for a substantial portion of the travel between your residence and place of employment so long as you do not also receive transportation in a commuter highway vehicle, any transit pass, or qualified parking benefits. Of course, your employer could pay you more – but anything over the limit would be considered taxable compensation.
If your employer doesn’t yet offer you a reimbursement, take the opportunity today to talk to him or her. Most employers like to keep their employees happy – and this is a really cost-effective way to do so. A win-win.
If your employer still isn’t on board after you make this case, consider throwing this statistic around: full-time workers in the U.S. who are overweight or obese and have other chronic health conditions miss an estimated 450 million additional days of work each year compared with healthy workers — resulting in an estimated cost of more than $153 billion in lost productivity annually. (Source: Gallup) Exercise is good for you. And good for you means good for your company.
So, go get on the bike. Ride like the wind. And save a few dollars (and maybe your health) in the process.
