VTR1000.ORG

As you are aware i am a tad miffed with my Job. firstly i miss having a van, secondly i have a car and have been told it costs me probably £230 month to have it, yes i get 10p mile for business use but i am losing approx £100 month for not claiming private mileage, so thats apprx £330 month to have the car.

Ive been offered a job with a van and free fuel but its £6k a year less. I may not be a lot worse off, anybody got any ideas how it works out?

I did the same calculations myself not so long ago. I had the choice of a company car (and car tax) or buy my own car.
Company car was 14p a mile for business use whereas I can claim 45p a mile tax free with my own car (25p after 10,000 miles).
It works out I'm much better off having my own car.

If you take a company van, you'll still have tax to pay on that van and the fuel. If you get personal fuel too, the tax is much steeper.

To work out what you're paying now for that car, I'd need to know what car it is you have and what your pre tax income is (actually just whether you're in the 20% or 40% tax bracket).
E.g. say you're earning £24k and you have a BMW 318d manual, you'd be expecting to lose 22% of the list price £28,870 from your personal allowances.
That works out as £6,351 off your personal allowances, in effect, meaning you'll pay an extra £1,270 a year in tax (Since £24k is in the 20% tax bracket).
If you're earning £40k and you have the same car, you'd still lose £6,351 from your personal allowances, but since you're now paying 40% tax, you'll be losing out on £2,540 a year.

One thing that strikes me is that 10p a mile is low, you'd need a very fuel efficient car to be not making a loss on that. At today's prices that's going to mean 55mpg minimum.

One last thing - you can claim the difference between 10p a mile and the maximum allowance 45p a mile as tax relief.
E.g. if you do 10,000 miles you can only claim £1,000 at the moment, but at the maximum allowance, you could claim £4,500.

You can claim that £3,500 back from the government in tax relief. That doesn't mean they pay you £3,500, but means you don't pay tax on an additional £3,500 of your earnings.
In the 20% tax bracket that would be £700 back a year from the government.

With the amount of years you have been working for them and at £230 a month which is £2760 a year you could have bought it. I don't see the point in a company vehicle if they offset it against your wages like that and you dont own the vehicle at the end. That's like going out and hiring a car to go to work in. Why when you have your own vehicle to travel to and from work on. It don't make sense unless it's required to do the work in which case you should not be paying to work for them If you owned the vehicle after so long then it may be diffrent accept you could quite easily go somewhere else and buy a car and pay monthly for so many years and then own it. You get the vehicle of your choice then.

I have come to the conclusion that all companies take us for mugs. We work for them they pay us to do the work. That's how it works. We don't pay them to do the work or to be slave driven. It's bad enough that the government rob us. By the time one works out how much work they do for the wages they get and then get robbed by the government so there's even less in our pockets. It hardly makes working for someone else worth it. We're all slaves unless we work for ourselves and even then we're slaves to society.

It's about time the monetary system was abolished and someone came up with a new concept and way of life for people to survive rather than feeding the pots of the government's, companies and bankers as it all goes back to them in one form or another. What are they going to do when the machines have totally taken over and there's no need for people to do the work. It will be like a new industrial revolution. Machines can build machines to do the work. No need for humans. That's the direction things are heading in. By that stage unemployment will be sociably acceptable as there will be less and less humans employed and more machines /robots doing the work. More humans unemployed than employed. Maybe we will have a voucher system by then or they will allow us poorer folk to die off to control the worlds population crises and balance things out so there is more resources on the planet. Machines print off and distribute a preset value of vouchers where everyone gets the same, including men, woman and children. As soon as another baby is born they print more vouchers so that baby gets the same amount vouchers. Or maybe we could simply walk into the stores and take whatever we need. Machines could be that productive that there will always be a supply.

Anyway I digress By that stage you can have any vehicle you want...for nothing

the only benefit from a company car in my opinion is that you have no runnings costs and basically a good car every 3 years. if it don't start i don't go to work, tyres are free and you can rag the bugger however it is nice to get into a good car each day. tax may be the issue though.

next time i will buy my own and claim the fuel back or lease one. i get £600 month max to buy and run a car. i do however do almost 30,000 a year.

bigtwinthing wrote:the only benefit from a company car in my opinion is that you have no runnings costs and basically a good car every 3 years

That's very true.
Another way to look at is what would it cost to buy, run and maintain a new car every three years.
I have a friend (company director) who lease hires a car. He looked at the price of a new car, how much it would depreciate over three years and used that figure to compare against lease hire costs. He's not flash and only has a Audi A4 but it works out cheaper to lease hire than own in his case.
And no company car tax plus mileage allowance when using it for work

Pete.l

If you have a van or truck which is classed as a commercial vehicle and you only use it for business use then your presonal tax allowance is unaffected.

If your company lets you use it for personal use and pays for the fuel then you loose a fixed amount of your personal tax allowance. The tab for maintaining the vehicle including insurance is paid for by the company which could make up for that loss if you are comparing it to owning your own vehicle.

Company cars are taxed based on the purchase price and the VED duty classification wich obviously will vary depending on what sort of car your company provides you with.

Al.

Go onto comcar.co.uk gives you exactly what you pay for any car including extras.
With the milage you do you are better off with a company motor. Im in the same boat. Its about 22k a year is the breaking point.
If you can afford to get a motor without having to pay any interest then you should break even.
Best bet is if you can get some sort of commercial vehicle, pay the fuel yourself and claim back the milage.
you can claim the tax difference from what you getnow as per mizy says but once that tax box is open they hound you every year for a tax return.
Leasing is great if you can get a good deal without having to put down a,mega deposit.
My company are crap as they insist that if you use your own motor it can't be older than 4 years old.
Also check how much your insurance will be with that amount of business mkles. Wont be good.

Thank you Guys, as always the forum is more like google everyday. Full of knowledgeable types

I use my own car (2002 Mk4 Golf) for company use and get 0.55 per mile. Very helpful. The Storm however is a company bike. PPE (Leathers, helmet gloves etc..) is a company expense and no tax implications. It is my own company though.....

I use a company vehicle at work and am not allowEd to use it for personal use. I employ " bangernomics" for my own vehicle. Every 5 or six years I look out for a lowish mileage 6 or 7 seven year old car ( normally about 3 grand). I then run it until it becomes beyond economic repair then I scrap it. Cars are pretty reliable these days so I don't get too much grief? Mind you at the end of the process you are running round in a bit of a heap! I don't drive many miles (private) though.