Australian brewer Lion Nathan is bubbling with excitement over a new program that helps it leverage the purchasing power of its own employees by allowing them to acquire discount portable computers as part of a salary sacrifice scheme.

Toshiba is promoting a novel new purchasing program that could help it to weather the PC market and help increase its share of the corporate notebook market. Called THAT (Take Home a Toshiba), the program gives employees of SMEs and large corporate enterprises the opportunity to leverage their employer's purchasing power to acquire a discount portable computer as part of a salary sacrifice scheme.

THAT takes advantage of a concession that exempts portable computers from liability in the Fringe Benefits Tax schedule. Toshiba says that under the scheme an employee's salary package would be "re-modelled to incorporate the purchase of the notebook and calculated before tax", effectively reducing impact of the sale on the consumer's disposable income.

The logic of the scheme isn't lost on Wayne Fernance, remuneration and benefits manager for brewing company Lion Nathan, which is endorsing THAT as an effective staff retention mechanism. "For every dollar you spend you earn need to earn more depending on your marginal tax rate. This expense comes off [our employees] gross income," he said.

Lion Nathan says that the scheme, which has the potential provide employers with an avenue to offset IT costs against wages, places no obligation on its employees to purchase a laptop for work-purposes.

"We were looking at ways to provide our employees with additional non-cash benefits and that's (THAT's) one thing that we could do. With banking and other important services online these days we have a commitment to make sure our employees are able to afford to keep up."

"At this stage everyone is thinking employee benefits," said Toshiba marketing manager, Leslie MacLennan reflecting on her discussions with two other companies who have expressed interest in THAT.

MacLennan was unable to disclose details of the price advantage employees purchasing through the THAT scheme over retail consumers.

"It will vary from case to case. If the enterprise is already a customer of another of our volume purchasing schemes the discount could be larger than for a customer of THAT alone," she said.

Lion Nathan were able to offer their employees a standard package, which included a Satellite 1730CDT, Microsoft Office and Norton Anti Virus for AU$3150, and a bundle-free system for AU$2179, according to Fernance. At the time the details of the scheme were finalised in March 2001, the base configuration of the 1730CDT could be purchased on the street for AU$3355.

In addition to the up-front savings employees are able to claim a tax rebate on the portable computer if they use it for work related purpose. Employers may also be able to claim GST input credits for the purchase of the laptop and pass those on to employees.

Toshiba, who started offering the scheme last November says it's too early to predict the volume of inventory that might make its way to consumers through the employee benefit schemes.

Of Lion Nathan's 1200 employees 65 opted to take advantage of the offer, but Toshiba has hinted that it may increase the scale of their employee benefit scheme through a deal with payroll outsourcing firm PaySelect, which is a subsidiary of MicroPay.

"I am talking to them at the moment and [Toshiba] will certainly be cross-referencing with them," said MacLennan. "We're aware of each other but I wouldn't go so far as to say that we (Toshiba) have a relationship with them (PaySelect) yet," she added later.

PaySelect currently has an alliance with Vodafone and Dick Smith Electronics, the latter providing its client's employees with brand-agnostic "expert assistance in purchasing a laptop that suits their individual requirements."

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