Company car - no private mileage - do I need to pay tax?

sillygoose

I think some people are just guessing the rules here! I work (based from home) for a very large company provided with company cars. There has always been the option of a tax-free business use only car. A company employing nearly half a million people should understand the tax rules!

As the op understand clearly, this means there cannot be a single inch of private use, including even any diversion on route that could be construed as private (but then again even Tesco/B&Q sell what for some could be claimed as business materials (paper, pens, tools, ink cartridges) as long as the journey was claimed from the company as a business trip too)

If you mess up and get caught out you end up paying the full tax for perhaps only using the car for 2 private miles so you lose out big time.

For some time now our company has tried to hush up this option and make it unattractive by limiting it to a choice of horrible models, they hate it because they have to bear the full cost of the vehicle whereby on most schemes now if you use it privately they can squeeze substantial contribution out of you for the car too.

For some people, especially with tight budgets and perhaps bigger families it makes a lot of sense as the company vehicle may be rubbish for family life so your better taking the business use only car, saving the tax and putting the money toward running something sensible of your own too.

Lum

Ok I can see why being downgraded from an A6 to a Civic would be annoying. The Civic is not a bad car by any means but it's not suitable as a long distance tourer. It's more of a town car that is competent on the odd, maybe twice a year, motorway run to Cornwall/Skegness/wherever. It's not something you want to be in when you're up and down the motorway every day.

Plus if the OP has a big family, especially if that A6 was an estate, and needs to cart around a couple of pushchairs then yeah, he's going to need to provide a personal car now.

Also, sillygoose, thank you for injecting some actual facts into this thread!

OP: Did you call the revenue?

colino

Johnnyroper, I had a similar deal when I was attached to a government department and allocated an Astra (thereafter called the Nastra). I'm pretty sure they had no clue what was going on taxwise as I could drive to the moon and back, record it as a site visit and no-one ever checked. (They also paid me an extra fee for maintenence, i.e., "garaging" it at home!) Every other job though since, the taxman has had his sticky hands on my cash.

Lum

Urgh, I've had Mk5 Astras as hire cars. I had a 1.8 Astra and drove it from Cardiff to Hull thinking it was a moderately competent diesel based on it's performance. Imagine my surprise when on the A63 I realised my tank was almost empty (70 quids worth) and the sticker int he fuel flap said petrol.

It was also painfully uncomfortable, had those awful "smart" indicators which in reality are cheap nasty indicators with no latching mechanism in order to save a few pence on each one regardless of the problems they cause.

Yeah I'd want business use only on an Astra too, and that's just for myself.

I don't /like/ my Mondeo but it's at least good for the job in hand.