classic car as advertising? costs and benifits help needed

bear23

Hello i am self employed and thinking of buying a classic car and having it heavily sign written, purely for business advertising. At present i keep a milage diary but with this sign written car all travel will be supporting my business?? Is there a right way to go about this??
Q's
is the cost of car offsetable against business income as either car costs or advertising costs?
is petrol offsetable as an associated running cost of advertising? or would i still have to do business journeys even though the journey itself is now funtioning as a advertising venture?
Any help will be greatly appreciated

Lyndsay101

The car is capital expenditure so you would get capital allowances on the business use proportion of the car (subject to max of £3000 * business use % per annum).

The costs of sign writing will be deductible as advertising.

I doubt you would be able to agree with HMRC that any private use of the car is incidental to the advertising of the business and therefore I dont think you'll get an off set against business income for the proportion of private journeys.

Business petrol - deductible as usual
Private petrol - not deductible

Pennywise

A private journey is still a private journey. You'll not be able to convert a trip to the supermarket into a business journey just because of the advertising potential. You apportion the car costs in proportion to private versus business mileage. If you do 50:50 you can claim half the usual capital allowances and half of all the running expenses including fuel. The advertising doesn't change it from being a car - it's still a car and the usual car rules apply.

bear23

thanks for your replies, so i might think about a classic Van instead , as it would be a bigger advert and be seen as a works vehicle by HMRC??

roger_c

"A private journey is still a private journey." that's all I have to add! lol

Pennywise

bear23 wrote: »

thanks for your replies, so i might think about a classic Van instead , as it would be a bigger advert and be seen as a works vehicle by HMRC??

For a sole trader, van costs are still apportioned between business and private use.