company cars

I've always had lease cars that I can upgrade/downgrade according to how much I want to contribute or save.

This has recently reverted to the old style "essential user company car" ie choice between a Megane and Astra FFS!

The downside is I ended up with the 1.7 diesel Astra SE/130hp (99g/co2) goes quite well but which is hardly inspiring. It costs me £55pm benefit in kind (the list price was a ludicrous £23,800). The upside is It averages 55mpg but will easily do 70mpg on longer runs. I get the inland rev fuel rate at 15ppm which means my business mileage covers some of my private use too. I don't pay anything for road tax, insurance, servicing, Tyres etc which is nice.

All told it saves me £100-150pm on my old lease deal.

Having a Zed for weekend use makes it a LOT less shitty as I just see it as a work tool (whilst feeling like a bit of a tool driving it :| )
 
Car scheme every time unless you can be totally unemotional about what you drive for business (and don't mind throwing money down the drain in tax).

I opted out about 15 years ago and can't think of a scenario where I'd choose a car over an allowance. There are definite tax advantages with an allowance too (not least of which is being able to claim tax relief for business use of a private car when doing business mileage!).

Sure some companies insist on a maximum age for the car (6 yrs where I work) and some stipulate it must have four doors, luckily my company has the rather vague "must be suitable for business needs" but even if they insist on a 5 door hatch there are some pretty nice ones out there (135i, 3 or 5 series GT, A5 fastback).

:driving: happy not taxed!
 
I had no idea that it was more common for an allowance to stipulate (to a degree) what car you buy. Our allowance is just cash - you can spend it all on crisps if you want.

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MrPT said:
I had no idea that it was more common for an allowance to stipulate (to a degree) what car you buy. Our allowance is just cash - you can spend it all on crisps if you want.

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Same here. We are a FTSE 250. The whole point of our allowance is that it is an "opt out" and not a "car purchase" allowance for those who would be eligible for a company car in their job role. A lot of our London based employees for example, choose not to have a car at all and use the allowance for train season tickets or to cover higher living expenses etc.
 
I take an annual allowance of £7k in lieu of not receiving a car, so essentially I get a line in my salary that says car allowance that's added to my salary so I pay normal tax.
No restriction on what I buy with it :D
On top of that I can claim 45p per business mile :D :D
 
This is a really useful thread as I think there are quite. Lot of people on here in the same boat.

Does anyone have any recommendations on leasing companies?
 
pvr said:
cj10jeeper said:
Interesting PVR. I've been running ltd since converting my sole several years ago.
I assume the cost of the sole accounting and other charges is outweighed by the 25% depreciation, write off and expensing the other stuff.

Obviously no interest as I'm keen to pay max tax.
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I received a massive tax refund when I sold my old X5, as the tax calculation is:

- 25% depreciation per year of the car, with a maximum of £2500 (or thereabouts). Yeah, right on an X5 :D
- When you sell the car, you can adjust the real loss versus the predicted one. So say after 4 years, tax office assumes you will have lost 10k on the car. In reality it is 30k or so, therefore 20k goes straight off your tax bill.

Figures vary a bit as you have to take the business % into account versus private use, I think I use something like 60/40 or so.
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So is the car owned by your LTD company, and do you then pay tax on that as a company vehicle? My wife has her own company and was told it was not beneficial to have the car listed through the company ?
 
Generally if you only pay tax at the lower rate the same car will be cheaper as a company car than if you took the allowance that is equal to the company's costs for said car. At the higher rate of tax the allowance will win the spreadsheet competition. Your company may allow you to add options/ or get a higher spec car in return for a contribution to the payments. They may also allow you to option down and get cash AND a company car.
I knocked up an excel sheet to work out how much things would cost. I'll try and dig it out.
We're currently in negotiations about our car allowance as the guys on the company car scheme can get a golf GTD /A3 in non flimper spec. I get an allowance and I'm losing about a grand a year as I'm doing 15k more miles a year than they thought I would, and I'm in a car that's £200 a year cheaper to lease than the golf or Audi.
 
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