Readers’ forum: Do employers meet benefit-in-kind criteria?

Smaller businesses that in reality are not going to set up their own nursery are able to club together with other employers to provide childcare for their employees’ children. This can be an exempt benefit in kind (EIM21920) for employees. The employer is wholly or partly responsible for financing and managing the provision of the care:

• Management requirement (EIM21930): employers must play a part in management. Arrangements in which the employer’s participation in management is little more than a token gesture purporting to meet the statutory test but without real responsibility falling on the employer will not meet the test.
• Financing requirement (EIM21925): the ‘responsibility for finance’ test for jointly run workplace nurseries requires significantly more than merely buying-in places from a commercial nursery whether on an ad hoc or a more structured basis. There must be some real and substantial commitment to funding...