Caz counts it down

AlexLK

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Don't fancy the road tax on a Disco! My neighbours had one for a bit and sold it in under a year because it was something like £465 to tax and filling the tank at north coast fuel prices was nearly £200. I shall continue my search for a Daihatsu Fourtrak, but they're few and far between these days.

The road tax on a "pre-emissions", so pre-2001 car is £230 for the year. See https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables for more information.

Discos do have a large 90 litre fuel tank but a 300TDI will do around 28mpg.

mfmaybe wrote: »

Yes agree Defenders for some reason are mega expensive. And rather agricultural, but of course that's the point.

I have a V reg Disco 2. 2.5L TDI. Great, great car, and the road tax is not £465. (no, for that honour I have my much more efficient non-4*4 car to thank :cool:). I think my Disco is about £260/year. - iirc the very expensive road tax is for a 2000 (W) plate or newer. I paid about £1500 for it last year. They tow 3.5 tons (as do Land Cruisers, but not much else) and they drive quite car-like. It tows fantastically as well. I do love it. It even has central locking :rotfl:

The very expensive road tax is on cars post-2006.

The Disco 2 TD5 is a good car but the rear chassis rots very badly so you need to be prepared to underseal it regularly. A Disco 1 is essentially the same as a Range Rover Classic but with a few different panels though some are interchangeable. The chassis is usually solid on these but the rear mounting points and bodies rot quite badly. In my humble opinion the one to go for is a low mileage, not rotten 300TDI as whilst it's quite civilised you can still do every job yourself. The D2s come with their own set of more complex problems and the engine is not quite so hardy.

Land Rover reckoned that you could pull 4 tonnes with a D1.

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

Part of the reason Defenders have got even more pricey than ever is because they've been discontinued - they've redesigned it (I've actually proofread some of the focus groups where people have seen some of the prototypes for the new one!), but there'll be a gap of a couple of years, I think, where you just can't buy a new one and apparently the new version is going to be closer to a Disco. Neighbour's Disco was brand new, hence the astronomical tax

I'm up late helping Mr RPC finish his reports - just waiting for him to upload the next section for me. It's not been a bad day, I posted out 40 orders, did some admin for Mr RPC and produced a flyer for him (he said on his first bit of dictation this evening that he wished I wasn't 500 miles away so he could offer me a full-time job!), finally got round to taking the bead shop's own website offline and putting up a page that redirects people to the eBay shop and blitzed the bathroom as my mother in law is coming out on Wednesday afternoon. Can't believe I threw away an entire binliner of stuff, it's a pretty small bathroom!!!

Mr RPC has pinged me on Skype to say go to bed and he'll send more in the morning, so I shall head upstairs and try to finish the second Game of Thrones novel before I have to give it back to the library van tomorrow.

Defenders are being discontinued at the end of the year and have always been rather expensive for what they are. However, you are right about the anticipated surge in values. Would be very interested to see the pics of the new one if you have them though.

cazmanian_minx

I don't, I'm afraid, they made the camera man stop filming when they took them into the room with the prototypes, so only sound was recorded. This was last year, anyway, so they've probably incorporated all the feedback now and it'll look different!

cazmanian_minx

Having a manic couple of days. Been helping Mr RPC finish his reports, which we've finally done after a spate of typing that finished just after midnight and a crash course for me in PowerPoint. He flies abroad on business on Friday morning and I have a load of research work to do for him tomorrow to give him briefing notes on various subjects for him to read on the flight. I do love this job

In-laws are up visiting MIL, we had a lovely meal out together last night (hence the late finish for the typing!) and they're all due to arrive here for tea in about ten minutes' time. The house is clean, the shortbread and brownies are baked, the scones are ready to go in the oven, the horses have been hooshed up to the top fields to look decorative (little gits promptly both got down and rolled!!) and the dog has been pleaded with to be on her best behaviour. Sure I've forgotten something, but it's too late now so no point in worrying

cazmanian_minx

A very lovely neighbour hooked up the trailer to his truck this morning and drove me 35 miles each way to get my hay. He was refusing to accept any fuel money from me, but I know that the round trip takes nearly quarter of a tank, so ignored him and made him take £20. Only got 6 bales down the hill so far, 34 more to take.

Did the briefing notes for Mr RPC, along with some dictated meeting notes and a memo. Tomorrow I need to update his back office system with the notes and create another set of meeting notes from a recording of a phone call he had with a client.

19 orders sent out today and I also re-calculated my annual turnover and worked out that as long as I don't sell all my remaining stock in the next four weeks, I'm okay to de-register for VAT, so I've applied to be de-registered from 28th February.

The Royal Mail bill is in, a little higher than last month, but it doesn't have to be paid until the 18th March and I already have just over a third of it allocated in YNAB. I need to have at least £500 available to pay myself on 1st March as well.

The search for a suitable towing vehicle continues. An advert went up locally from someone selling a Discovery for £2600 and a Range Rover for £950, so I sent him a text a few hours after the advert had appeared to find that the Rangie was already sold and he had someone coming to see the Disco that afternoon, but to check on Saturday morning if it sold or not. The friend who took me for hay today told me the place he bought his truck from was owned by Charlie's ex-wife's sister's husband's brother (I think!) and they were reputable and specialised in 4x4s, so I tracked down their website and I think we're going to go and have a look at this:

http://www.marello.co.uk/used.php?id=533

Yes, rather more than budgeted, but low mileage and will last us a while rather than going down the bangernomics route. If they'll take the Toyota as a trade-in for around the same price I'd get from webuyanycar, then it's worth doing.

Mara_uk7

We bought a vehicle off them a while back, nice guys to deal with. No t like used car salesmen at all

cazmanian_minx

gallygirl wrote: »

Almost below 5k in each of them as well :T. I hope we hit the milestones in 3 consecutive weeks :beer:.

Oh dear, looks like I can't resist a challenge :p:p Milestone one below:

Business
Overdraft: -£-5,090.00 / -£4,990.00 +£100.00

Business total: -£-5,090.00 / -£4,990.00 +£100.00

Personal
Halifax card: -£5,130.00 / -£5,130.00 no change

Personal total: -£5,130.00 / -£5,130.00 no change

Grand total: -£10,220.00 / -£10,120.00 +£100.00

To hit the other two in consecutive weeks, I need to pay £130 off the overdraft next week to bring the total to under £10,000, and then £140 off the Halifax card the week after to bring both debts under £5k- annoyingly, that'll be a few days before the statement generates, so the Halifax is going to get a good bashing. If I do it the other way around, then I hit both the other two next week and GG asked for three in a row

I've had a message from HMRC rejecting my deregistration request because they don't believe I'm eligible :mad::mad::mad::mad: I strongly suspect that what they've done is added the sales figures from my last four VAT returns together without noticing that the oldest one of the four is an annual return rather than a quarterly one. Fortunately there's an appeals process, so I have started it and sent them a message asking if that's what's happened and telling them that my turnover for the past 12 months including VAT for both businesses is £67,717.37, well under the deregistration limit of £79,000. Fingers crossed.

mfmaybe

Brilliant on the mini-target :j.

Very annoying about the HMRC rejection. It's just as well you are so on the ball with this stuff. They don't make things easy, for them or us, do they?

cazmanian_minx

mfmaybe wrote: »

Brilliant on the mini-target :j.

Very annoying about the HMRC rejection. It's just as well you are so on the ball with this stuff. They don't make things easy, for them or us, do they?

Ha, you are more right than you know - I got an auto-response to the message I sent them using the contact form on the link they had provided me with in the message telling me I had the right to appeal saying that since they hadn't requested any further information from me, they would not accept my message :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: So I found a telephone number for the VAT helpline, spent five minutes attempting to convince their automated security system that I was who I said I was and then another ten minutes on hold before getting through a nice helpful man who confirmed that the issue was probably caused by the annual return not being picked up on and said the only way I could appeal was in writing, which would take 30 days, and I have to keep charging VAT until they write to me to confirm my registration is cancelled :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

So I've sent them a polite one-page letter explaining that I wish to appeal their decision and setting out my reasons for believing I'm eligible to de-register and asking for a new de-registration date of 31st March. If they bounce it again, I am annoyed enough to take it up to the next stage and a tribunal - just delaying it by a month is probably going to cost me around £400.

Cwtchie

Why is one letter never enough!?

WeeMidgie

Good grief, it can't just be you Caz, people around the UK when they're winding down business operations, must also be encountering this hassle. What a terrible system.