Some employee perks are tax-efficient; some are tax-free. The point of this column is to pick out our favourite examples of both, and we'll be coming on to two specific examples of tax-free benefits this month. First of all, though, it's worth saying something to put the whole subject of tax-efficient remuneration in context.

Obviously, a lot of these pages are devoted to tax planning for people in business. The reason for this, quite simply, is because the tax system has most flexibility in the area of business taxes. But that's no reason why we should ignore the interests of the 'submerged nine-tenths'.

The vast majority of taxpayers in this country, of course, pay tax as employees. So, for them, the question of whether they can receive some kind of benefit that doesn't land them with a 40% or 50% tax charge, together with National Insurance, is a very simple and straightforward issue of tax or no tax. If you are a substantial or even majority shareholder in your own employer company, though, arguably the tax planning gets even more interesting.

The tax-planning point here is: how do you pay the minimum possible tax on the company's profits?

Last month, we talked about so-called high-level or aggressive tax planning, and pointed out the difference between this and structural planning. The hallmark of aggressive tax planning is generally that it seeks to reduce your tax to zero, even though you've made a profit. It does this by exploiting loopholes in the law, and as a result is frowned on by the Revenue and by judges who hear cases on the question of whether the planning works. Wouldn't it be nice if there were some way of enjoying the profits of your business tax-free without sticking your head above the parapet and asking to be shot at as a high-level tax planner?

Well, the point of what we are saying here is that there is! It may be less glamorous, less smacking of the jet set activities of those who deal in Bermuda companies, offshore derivative trading and rollup funds, but it works, albeit on what is generally a less spectacular scale.

One purpose of this series of pieces about tax-efficient remuneration is to help the majority of taxpayers, who are on PAYE. By receiving their income in the form of certain types of benefit in kind, rather than receiving it in cash, they can achieve tax-efficiency, or even income that is completely tax-free. But, as always, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and business people can take advantage of these types of tax-efficient, tax-free benefits as well.

From the point of view of the businessperson, the tax-planning problem is twofold: how to save tax at the company level and how to save tax at the personal level. Tax-free benefits achieve both of these, because providing your company employees with benefits (which includes providing benefits to yourself as a director) is an allowable purpose, the cost of which comes off the profits of your trade. So business profits spent in providing benefits to yourself are not taxed on the company. If the benefits are also specifically tax-free in your personal hands, you've achieved the ultimate objective of business tax planning: tax-free profits!

It's not possible, in one article, to do justice to the entire range of tax-efficient remuneration techniques. Whole books are written on the subject, and even our forthcoming book, The Entrepreneur's Tax Guide, which deals with the subject in brief, punchy and practical terms, devotes the whole of a fairly long chapter to it. So, what we'll be doing here is picking out a few topics each month, starting this month with car parking and canteens.

Whether our Government likes it or not, the brutal fact of the matter is that a large proportion of employees drive to work, because there's no other practical way of getting there. Presumably, this applies to people who work in tax offices as well, and we can't help feeling that there may be some connection between this and the fact that free or subsidised car parking at or near the employer's place of work is a tax-free benefit.

This may seem obvious in cases where there is a car park belonging to the office building or factory where the staff work. What may not be quite so obvious, though, is the fact that free car parking is also a non-taxable benefit where that takes place in a public car park, for example the multi-storey near the employer's premises in the middle of a town. And, at the risk of labouring the point, this is even the case if the company providing you with this benefit is your own company.

The tax exemption for staff canteens is a little more recherch‚. Again, we do wonder whether, in the larger Government offices, free or subsidised canteen facilities are provided. If so, it may or may not be coincidental that the subsidy is not taxed on the individuals as a benefit. So, who said there is no such thing as a free lunch?

Intriguingly, this principle can be extended in the case of owner-managed businesses, to feed the owner/managers themselves tax-free. The requirement is that the place where the meals are taken is not open to the public generally (so meals in restaurants and pubs don't qualify, unless there is a part set aside exclusively for the company), and that the facilities should be available to all the staff on similar terms.

But this only applies to staff at a particular location. Think about it: what about the situation where the only staff at a particular business location of the company are the husband and wife owners of all of the company shares?