Can I be forced to use my own car for business mileage?

banger9365

my business car insurance cost me £2 extra yes £2 for a 1000miles thats the minimum you can get i think ,
one part off my job is classed has not working put the company still pay my wages which means there car insurance do's not cover me and no mileage from them ,that comes from a different place,
because i am getting my wages my insurance classes it as work

colino

While there are good calculators for working this stuff out (This is Money is a good one) most people still think in terms of getting back their petrol money and believing they are in profit. What about real depreciation, servicing costs, additional wear and tear etc? Perhaps 20 years ago when a government agency were daft enough to give me 63ppm (and it was at least 300 miles a week, every week) there was profit to be made. If you are getting only HMRC permissable rates, make no bones about it, you are subsidising your employer.

newfoundglory

Okay, about 2 or 3 times a year I do a 165-mile round trip in my car for work. 45p/mile is about £75, my car is a 1.3 - I use just under half a tank of petrol (less than £24!). So for one trip thats £50 towards upkeep of the car.

It doesn't really change my insurance, servicing or maintenance costs. And it doesn't change depreciation - as an extra 500 miles on the clock is nothing for the extra £150.

Using the car for work is well worth it IMHO.

I guess if you owned a Porsche, it would be different.

Road_Hog

colino wrote: »

most people still think in terms of getting back their petrol money and believing they are in profit. If you are getting only HMRC permissable rates, make no bones about it, you are subsidising your employer.

Correct, but people don't seem to believe it.

Mids_Costcutter

Road_Hog wrote: »

Correct, but people don't seem to believe it.

I'd agree, but why do you think that is? Is it a case of justifying their purchase by pretending it's cheaper than it is actually is?

JQ.

Road_Hog wrote: »

Correct, but people don't seem to believe it.

Really, I know the total cost of running my car and it's considerably less than 45 pence per mile - which includes depreciation, tax, servicing, MOT, consumables, repairs, insurance and fuel. How much does yours cost?

Road_Hog

Mids_Costcutter wrote: »

I'd agree, but why do you think that is? Is it a case of justifying their purchase by pretending it's cheaper than it is actually is?

Because they don't look at it as a business decision. They think, oh I do one journey a week for the company, and it costs me £15 in petrol and I get £22 back from the company. They don't think, well, every time I drive for the company I risk having an accident, which will push up my insurance premium even if it isn't my fault. They mainly probably don't bother to business insure (which costs about an extra £20, despite the cheap claims made here), they don't think that consumables like tyres etc. are wearing more quickly and that they are devaluing their car by adding to the mileage.

They view it very simply, if they pay my fuel and I can stick a fiver in my pocket then I'm laughing. If they how much it cost a business to run a company/pool car, then they'd realise that it was the business that was laughing by using the employee to use his own car for so little.

Personally, (from someone who has been in middle management for a car manufacturer previously), I'd want a £1 a mile to bother using my own car.

jfh7gwa

There's lots of perfectly reasonable methods to say No to an employer's demands this way.

Insurance is the obvious one.

The other is to point out that it's not actually your car and you don't have permission to use it for business use (this one was true, when I lent a car for getting to work during a rough patch with public transport over the winter due to the bad weather). A spouse may come in handy for this.

A third is to break it down in cost terms, based on what the employer is giving you - many posters have already pointed out that in 99% of cases it is simply subsidising your employer's business costs by using your own vehicle.

I would not use my own car for business use, for the record. A £50 "profit" here from a few hundred mile roundtrip turns out not a profit at all, as colino explained above.

And that isn't even my main worry if I buckled to my employer on this.

But there are three additional worries:

1) Already, we are often expected to pay out ad hoc costs and get them back on expenses. If I start using my own car for odd business trips during the day, I already have to shell out on the extra petrol. Plus associated costs - does my employer start expecting me to put my money in the pay and display meters? Or expect me to use my mobile phone to pay for the car park charges? i.e. spending more of my net pay locked up in claims back from my employer? I don't have that kind of kitty to place at their disposal.

2) Do I really want to start setting a precedent here, regarding what tools I need to do my job? E.g. in the above example, I'd need to start carrying change for the parking meters, or use my mobile to pay - if my car goes kaput, or my mobile packs in (it's about 4 years old, cheapo one, only used for emergencies).. I then can't do my job. Because my employer has relied on MY use of it. It puts the stress of fixing these things far higher.

3) If I were using my car for business trips to other offices, most of them don't have dedicated parking space for staff, so it's public parking all the way. Not only do I run the higher risk of accidents (affecting my no claims and premiums), I run the risk of damage and vandalism. I live in a crap area, but my car is parked in a dedicated house space at home... during the day for work, it would be on public streets. I don't want my car stolen or its wing mirror bashed in, thanks - and business trips have a higher associated risk than my home's postcode.

There is much, much more to consider than mere petrol costs (or even associated costs like tax/MOT) to running a car for your employer's benefit.

I guess many people don't consider these things until it all goes tits up.

One example is that I have a friend whose boss is now suddenly refusing to sign off her expenses - about £500 worth. I'm not going to put myself in that same vulnerable position, to what... currey favour? Even if my boss said "look, you have to use your car or you're fired", that would be a new requirement for my job, and I'd look to move, simple as that.

JQ.

Road_Hog wrote: »

Because they don't look at it as a business decision. They think, oh I do one journey a week for the company, and it costs me £15 in petrol and I get £22 back from the company. They don't think, well, every time I drive for the company I risk having an accident, which will push up my insurance premium even if it isn't my fault. They mainly probably don't bother to business insure (which costs about an extra £20, despite the cheap claims made here), they don't think that consumables like tyres etc. are wearing more quickly and that they are devaluing their car by adding to the mileage.

They view it very simply, if they pay my fuel and I can stick a fiver in my pocket then I'm laughing. If they how much it cost a business to run a company/pool car, then they'd realise that it was the business that was laughing by using the employee to use his own car for so little.

Personally, (from someone who has been in middle management for a car manufacturer previously), I'd want a £1 a mile to bother using my own car.

You've not answered my question above, how much does it cost to run your car? My car costs 30p per mile including all costs (business insurance included), so 45p per mile is quite profitable.

ps. £15 of petrol at 35mpg would get you £40 tax free from the employer at 45p per mile not the £22 you stated. Up that to a diesel running 50mpg and you'd be getting £54 tax free and a petrol running 50mpg would get you a whopping £57 tax free.

telboyo

JQ. wrote: »

You've not answered my question above, how much does it cost to run your car? My car costs 30p per mile including all costs (business insurance included), so 45p per mile is quite profitable.

ps. £15 of petrol at 35mpg would get you £40 tax free from the employer at 45p per mile not the £22 you stated. Up that to a diesel running 50mpg and you'd be getting £54 tax free and a petrol running 50mpg would get you a whopping £57 tax free.

Your employer will return £40 to you but you have already spent £15. So your "profit" is £25.
One of the companies I worked for would only pay mileage in very rare circumstances- all other times they would deliver an appropriate hire car to work/home and supply you with a fuel card so all that was required was to drive said vehicle. Imagine the embarrasment if you had to tell yyour employer that you could not afford to lay out 1000 miles of petrol in one go. Their response would be never mind you will get £450 back, this is not a good situation to be in.

To answer the underlying question, no, you cannot be forced, the only thing anyone has to do in this life is die.