Company Car v Personal Lease

maisie1234

After 30 yrs of having a company car (I do about 8k business miles per year) I am now considering a personal lease.

I currently have a Mini Countryman and am looking for something a little less expensive i.e Ford Fiesta (mid to top range).

I get a car allowance of £450 per month should I opt for the cash allowance but of course that will be taxed. I will need to buy insurance and have 5 years NCB which my company will be happy to confirm by letter - they are a large FTSE company.

Could someone give me some guidance please. The thing I am most interested in is the mileage allowance of 0.45 p per mile for business miles - I seem to pay so much tax on my Mini surely it must be better for me to opt for say a 3 yrs personal lease at say £12k miles pa?

InsideInsurance

They cannot confirm NCD, just 5 years claim free (though ideally you want more than that). A growing number of insurers will accept company car letters to give you some form of discount but it is by no means all and most that do do not give the same sort of credit as they'd apply to traditional personal lines NCD

You'd need to compare the BIK costs to the net additional income minus the running costs. Obviously the higher the tax band you are in the worse the BIK is but the less additional take home pay you get out of the allowance.

Certainly my former employer would only pay company car mileage rates if you qualified for a car allowance. They claimed this was HMRC rules but others have said this is wrong and the short fall can be claimed from HMRC but this obviously causes more headaches for you.

maisie1234

I am a higher rate tax payer and the company do pay out at 045p per mile. I have lots of colleagues who do it which is why I am thinking of it.

I will ring a few insurance companies regarding cover but I am a female over the age of 50 with a clean licence (no points for 5 years plus and then for a speeding offence).