How Jawnt Pass Supports Bike Benefits

In the last few years, I’ve noticed a big uptick in biking around my home city of San Francisco. There are more cyclists commuting downtown, more parents on cargo bikes taking their kids to daycare, more folks riding home with groceries in the front basket. As safer bike lanes get installed, e-bikes get cheaper, and bikeshare programs expand, the barriers to entry are coming down and the city feels more alive as a result.

Repeat this same trend across cities in the US and it’s clear that biking is becoming a much more viable (and healthy!) way to get around. Studies across the country have shown that even short, regular bike trips can improve mental health, boost cardiovascular fitness, and reduce stress.

This comes at a time when more and more employers are seeking ways to boost employee wellbeing. Even if bikes don’t fall under the traditional pre-tax benefits package that many employers offer, there’s still plenty employers can do to support biking as a sustainable commuting option. For the modern workplace, integrating bike benefits into commuter benefits should be easy, and with Jawnt Pass, it is.

What do we mean when we say bike benefits?

If you run a company and deal with benefits, you’re likely already familiar with traditional pre-tax benefits. Per IRS Code Section 132(f), employees can set aside part of their income before it’s taxed for use on eligible transit, parking, and vanpool expenses. These tax rules also allow employers to give employees transit or parking passes or funds on top of their regular compensation without needing to pay additional taxes on it. 

Other modes of getting around—like bikes, scooters, ridehailing, and even carpool—aren’t eligible for this special tax-free treatment. But employers can still give their employees free bikeshare memberships, for example. The employee will just have to pay income tax on it. In the benefits industry, we call these post-tax benefits.

Many employers choose to offer them as a way of supporting more sustainable, flexible, and inclusive commuting options. Employers decide how much of these costs they want to cover, and work with their benefits administrator to provide these perks to employees alongside their pre-tax commuter benefits. Many bikeshare companies offer special bulk discounts for employer programs.

Here are some examples of bike benefits:

• The City of Boston gives free bikeshare memberships to city employees.
• Microsoft offers its employees a $900 per year “Stay Fit” allowance for expenses related to biking.
• Sonos pays their employees cash for riding their bikes to the office, up to $5 a day.
• Some bikeshare companies such as Citi Bike in NYC and Indego in Philadelphia have corporate programs that let local employers subsidize their employees’ rides.

How Jawnt leads by example on bike benefits

At Jawnt, our workforce has the highest percentage of bicyclists of any team I’ve ever been on (which is saying a lot; my previous company was based in Amsterdam). We love bikes. So of course we lead by example and offer a generous bike benefit through our Jawnt Pass.

Every Jawnt employee is eligible to:

• Receive a $100 per month subsidy for eligible transit expenses. We can each elect to deduct more from our paycheck to be added to our transit funds tax-free, up to the federal limit.
• Receive a $100 per month subsidy for bike benefits. We can use it for individual bikeshare trips, or bank it to save up for a larger purchase, like an annual bikeshare membership or even a bike of our own.

This flexibility means that team members can use their funds however they’d like. The newest engineer in our NYC office just used their Jawnt Pass to purchase a Citi Bike Annual Membership. This week, while in Philly for our semiannual company offsite, I purchased a 24-hour Indego Guest Pass to bike to a team dinner. Meanwhile, my Philly-based coworkers put their annual passes to use to help show us out-of-towners around. 

Each of us uses our Jawnt Pass to pay for these expenses. Behind the scenes, Jawnt classifies transactions using pre-defined merchant codes and IDs, so that everything is correctly bucketed into the right accounts. In Jawnt, I can see how much I've used for transit in my transit account, and how much of my post-tax money I've used for bike-related expenses in my biking account.

How to offer bike benefits with Jawnt Pass

With Jawnt Pass, introducing a bike benefit to your employees can be as easy as flipping a switch:

• Let your Jawnt account manager know you’d like to start offering a subsidy for micromobility. We’ll work with you to define exactly what kinds of products and services you want to subsidize – bikeshare, bike rentals, bikes for purchase, bike maintenance, scooters?
• Determine your level of subsidy. Do you want to start with $20 a month and see how employees let it accumulate? Some other cash amount? Or would you prefer to stick to bikeshare memberships that are a fixed price?
• Announce the program! Let us help you spread the word. Consider organizing a few group rides, pop-up maintenance events, or other events to get the word out. 

Why offer bike benefits as an employer?

Beyond just “it’s the trendy thing to do”, there are plenty of reasons to make a lasting investment in bike benefits:

• It saves employees money on commuting
• It helps encourage return-to-office participation
• It can reduce employees’ commute times (no sitting in traffic!)
• It supports company sustainability and environmental goals
• It eases demand for parking 

We’re here to help! If you’re looking to bring bikeshare, bike rentals, or bike repair perks to your workforce, but aren’t sure where to start, Jawnt can help you design a program that fits your team’s needs. Get in touch to learn more.