Commuter Benefit: A Message from Jay at Commuter Checks

For those of you who just follow us through RSS and never really hit the comments section, Jay from Commuter Checks left a great comment on the last Commuter Benefits post that I wanted to share with everyone.

Hello All,

Jay, from Commuter Check again. I would first like to thank all the IndyCog participants for their interest in the biking benefit. You have a great community here. I thought I would provide some updates to Christopher's comments to provide some further information.

Commuter Check has been providing commuter benefit solutions for over 18 years. We provide the commuter benefits for employers nationwide, which means that if your employer has an office in Indianapolis, San Francisco and Boston, we can service all their needs. We have multiple solutions available to suit the needs of any employer whether they have 5 or 5,000 employees. We work with each employer to make the benefit easy and convenient to provide to their well deserving employees.

We have been ecstatic over the IRS inclusion of the bike benefit to the IRS regulation and have great feedback from users of the bike voucher already. As previously mentioned by IndyCog, the bike benefit allows employees commuting to work to obtain a pre-tax deduction of $20 a month, $240 a year. Our voucher solution allows employers to comply with the IRS regulations and employees to utilize the benefits.

The bike voucher is only part of services. The other part is a pre-tax deduction for transit. Currently, employees can have up to $230 a month be deducted by their employer pre-tax for their public transit fares associated with the commute to work and this includes vanpools. Through our services we offer Commuter Check vouchers that can be used for purchasing transit passes or to pay for vanpool expenses. We have established relationship with the major vanpool operators and can easily work with any vanpool operator to except the voucher. We also have a relationship with IndyGo and purchase their passes for employees and have them sent on a monthly basis to their home or preferred address each month. The same can occur for the bike voucher.

This is important for bicyclists in the Indianapolis area to know when asking their employer to offer the deserved biking benefit. Our services cover all their employees if the bicyclists are not the majority, so if your employer says they cannot offer the benefit just for bicyclists we can get them on board the serve everyone. In closing, for more fire power, there is also a tax savings for the employer, Win - Win for all!

If you have any questions please feel free to give us a call or have your employer call us, 800-531-2828. One last thing, there are many documents on our commuter benefit services that can be provided to employers. Since this benefit has been updated every year and twice this year, for the most up to date information just give us a call!

Best regards, Jay (Commuter Check Services)

Commuter Benefits: Resources

All right. The long-awaited moment. Time for me to finally provide you with some resources for you to get the conversation started with your employers and continue to advocate for commuter benefits at your workplace.

First off, here is the link to the League of American Bicyclists FAQ; this is linked to from pretty much every site covering the benefit, and a great starting point, but isn't the be-all-end-all FAQ that it's generally touted to be.

Like I've said before, the Commuter Checks option is the more marketable option to take to your employers, so here are some good resources that I've dug up on their site.

These first three are PDF brochures that you can print out and take to your employers:

Commuter Check Benefits Solutions Brochure: outlines the two Commuter Checks options, and also includes a good breakdown of how much money can be saved by both employees and employers by taking advantage of this benefit
Commuter Check Direct Datasheet: this is the option I mentioned in my previous post that allows the employees to order their own Commuter Checks once the employer has enrolled in the program, so no up-front expenses need be paid on the part of the employer.
Commuter Check Office Datasheet: option requiring a bulk order of Commuter Checks by an employer who will then distribute them to their employees.

Here is a link to the Commuter Check Benefit Solutions page for employers. It includes FAQs and employer based resources on what the benefit is, and how to get enrolled with Commuter Checks.

And, lastly, here is a link to the Commuter Check Solutions page for employees. This page also has FAQs, and also resources to help you get the conversation started with your employers, including email forms, savings calculators, testimonials and case studies, blah blah blah. It's a really, really good resource for getting your employers to listen to you.

One last thing--when talking to my HR rep, her interest was perked even more when I mentioned that the fringe benefit was for vanpooling and mass transit also, which encompasses more possible employees that would benefit from enacting commuting policies at your workplace. So, don't just talk about how this will benefit bike commuters, but also people who vanpool or take IndyGo to and from work. More employees taking advantage of the benefit means more tax savings for the company; they like that.

Commuter Benefits: The Rub

So, I’m a liar.

I said my next installment of the commuter series would include resources to take to your employers, and that will come, but a question posed by a commenter on the last article prompted some digging for answers that made me realize my understanding of the commuter benefit wasn’t quite right. And, I figured it’d be best to get all the facts straight before you took them to your employers. So, here goes. It’s a bit tricky, so bear with me.

My misunderstanding was in the language. I’ve been thinking this was a $20 tax credit; when in actuality, it’s a $20 tax benefit. Here’s the difference:

A tax credit is be the government directly giving you $20 of your paycheck back, similar to the idea that if you by a house this year, they’ll give you $8000, straight up.

A tax benefit is the government simply not taxing $20 of your paycheck. This is more similar to a flex spending program if you’re familiar with that. The idea is that you set aside a portion of your income to be spent on something specific that the government has deemed tax-exempt (for instance, healthcare costs, or in this case, bike commuting costs), and the government doesn’t tax that portion of your income.

So, what does this mean for us? It means we (or the companies we work for if they choose to subsidize the program and then reimburse through employee salary deductions) have to set the money aside first. We do this by buying the Commuter Checks. Yes, buying the Commuter Checks. Then, what happens, is Commuter Checks sends a form to our employers that says, "They bought a Commuter Check; don’t tax $20 of their income this month," and you get a few more bucks back on your paycheck (approximately $4-5 a month).

You may be thinking, "Wait. We pay $20 a month, and only get $4-5 back? That doesn’t add up." The idea is that when you buy the Commuter Checks, you’re designating that $20 a month to go toward bike commuting expenses. Consider it this way — if you pay 30% in taxes, then essentially, the government is giving you a 30% discount on anything you buy with the Commuter Checks. And, since you’ll likely be spending that $20 a month on bike commuting anyway, why not tell the government by buying the Commuter Checks and get the discount?

Over the course of the year, it works out to be about $100 — which breaks down to be about 12 free tubes a year, or 3-5 new tires, some new Sugino cranks, almost enough for that new Chris King headset — you get the idea. It’s small, but it adds up.

Also, the Commuter Checks don’t expire until 13 months after their purchase, so if you have something you want to buy that’s worth $40, you can save two of the $20 Commuter Checks, and then spend them together. It takes a little patience, but again, it adds up.

Lastly, consider this a pilot program on the part of the government. A handful of representatives have been pushing this benefit for years, and the rest of Congress and the House finally said, "Okay." The more interest there is in the benefit, the easier it will be for those representatives to push for a limit higher than $20 a month in the future, which would trickle down to even more tax savings for us. Like I said — patience and pay off.

I know this isn’t nearly as great a benefit as I initially thought it was, and some of you may feel a bit misled like I did at first. But, I still think it’s worthwhile to try to promote and enact at your places of employment. If they give you the "need to work it into our budget" excuse, kindly inform them that there is an option through Commuter Checks to allow your employees to buy the checks themselves, and so no "budget-reworking" is required on the part of the company.

I’m sorry also for the misunderstanding of the benefit that I initially passed on to all of you. I hope this clarifies things a bit better. If it’s still a bit hazy, please feel free to ask in the comments or shoot me an email, and I’ll do my best to clarify things for you.

Commuter Checks Info

Yesterday, I got ahold of Jay Retkevicz from Commuter Checks and he gave me some info about the program and how shops can get involved. It's.. stupidly simple.

Basically, if a shop wants to accept the commuter checks, all they have to do is call Commuter Checks at 800.531.2828 (or, call Jay personally at 857-228-1425), and tell them you want to start accepting the commuter checks.

That's it.

There isn't any signing up or anything; you just simply start accepting them as they come into your shop and deposit them at the bank as you would a normal check (think along the lines of a traveler's check). Basically, the call is a formality to let them know you're planning to accept them, and they'll send you a packet of info about accepting and redeeming the commuter checks, some decals/flyers/store signage to advertise that you welcome the commuter checks, and voila.

So, call them. Or, if you're not a shop owner, go into your local shop, and ask them to call them.

Lastly, like I said before, shoot me an email (christopher@theindycog.com) after you've contacted them, and I'll get you on a list I'm compiling of area shops accepting the commuter checks that will be up on IndyCog. Currently, I've heard from Gray Goat Sports on the southside, and I know that Joe's has been approached.

My next post on this issue will include resources and info on how to approach your employers about the commuter benefits.

Bike Commuter Benefit--No Indy Shops Accepting Commuter Checks Yet

So, hopefully most of you have now heard about the tax benefit for bicycle commuting tucked away in the stimulus plan. For those of you who haven't, the jist is that you can now receive $20 a month to offset costs related to bicycle commuting--new bike, spare tubes, tires, tune-ups, maybe some fenders for rainy days, etc. Sure, $20 bucks a month isn't much, but hold off complaining about not getting as big a bone as you'd have liked for a moment and listen.

First off, realize this is a payroll tax benefit, not a government payout. Basically, for riding your bike to work, they're letting you keep 20 more of your dollars that you've worked for. So, any qualms you have about government spending is null and void. This isn't government spending. It's more like a $240 a year tax cut for riding your bike.

Secondly, there are two ways in which you can receive the benefit: cash reimbursement through your company involving paper work and receipts and yadda yadda for you and your company, or Commuter Checks from Accor, which make the process for both you and your company much simpler. Most companies will likely opt for the Commuter Checks option, and as an employee trying to talk your company into adopting the tax benefit, the Commuter Checks are the more marketable option to HR and payroll.

There's just one catch. The Commuter Checks are only redeemable at participating bicycle retailers, and as of yet, there is not a single bike shop in the state of Indiana (let alone the city of Indianapolis) who accepts the Commuter Checks.

I was going to make a post of resources for readers to email their HR departments or their employers to get the ball rolling on commuter benefits at their workplaces, but I realize now the first step is to get local shops involved so we can actually make use of these Commuter Checks if/when we get our employers to issue them.

So, this is what you do:

1) Call up or go into your local bike shop (Joe's, T3 Multisport, Gray Goat, Bike Line, ICS, etc.), and tell them you'd like to spend your future Commuter Checks at their shop.

2) Ask them to call Accor Commuter Check Services at 800.531.2828 and enroll to accept the Commuter Checks.

3) Have them email me at christopher@theindycog.com and let me know their shop is accepting the Commuter Checks; I'll put them on an ongoing list of participating shops that will be accessible via a future link on a sidebar here on IndyCog.