Are you offering your staff a flu vaccination?

Why would an employer pay for this?

Some employers will want to offer this out of concern for staff welfare. You may also consider that if your staff are vaccinated against the flu then they are less likely to have time off sick which is a cost to your business. If you can reduce the number of days of staff sickness absence then the cost of providing flu jabs could be well worth it.

But are flu jabs a taxable benefit?

As with so many things in tax, it depends.

If as an employer you arrange for vaccinations in the workplace (office, factory etc) then the cost could be tax exempt under trivial benefit rules.

Similarly if as the employer you provide a voucher for staff to receive their vaccination at a pharmacy, the cost could again be exempt under the same trivial benefit rules.

Do make sure that you check that what you are providing does fall within the trivial benefit rules.

However, if staff arrange their own flu jab and then claim reimbursement from the employer, this does not fall within the trivial benefit rules and the employer should therefore treat the reimbursement as taxable.

As you can see, the devil is in the detail.

Talk to your accountant before you go ahead with something which could be a taxable benefit