personal allowance and new car

furn17

I'm a GP and use my car for home visits daily. This year I bought a new cR via a hire purchase agreement. I use my car for my visits, commuting to work (various bases one of which is at my salaried job and the others are locums at different centres) and for personal use. I've heard that I can calculate part of the cost of my car and include it into my expenses and subsequent personal allowance. Does anybody know how I go about this?

jimmo

If you are self-employed you have the choice of either claiming
1) HMRC’s standard mileage rates 45ppm for the first 10,000 business miles each year and 25ppm for any business miles in excess of 10,000. All you need to maintain for tax purposes is a record of your business mileage.
2) the business proportion of the total costs of running your car. Depreciation is dealt with by way of capital allowances. The remainder fuel, servicing, repairs, tyres, insurance, road fund licence etc all need to be recorded along with a record of both business mileage and private mileage.
In my experience, most self-employed people use the HMRC standard mileage rates but there is a choice.
Also, regardless of which option you choose, you can claim the business proportion of interest paid on car finance.
If you are an employee you have no choice, you must use HMRC’s standard mileage rates and cannot claim for interest. So buying a new car will not affect your tax.
At this stage my best guess is that you are mainly employed but some elements of your locum work may constitute self-employment.
There could be some tax saving opportunities for you here but if you have a mix of employment and self-employment you really could do a lot worse than sitting down with a local accountant and paying him or her to look after your tax affairs.
And that’s from a (retired) taxman.