Company car take home pay

MEM62

unholyangel wrote: »

No option to reject the fuel benefit?

I do agree the government are going about it all the wrong way though. They shouldn't have ved based on emissions alone. You could have a less "eco friendly" car that only does 2k miles a year yet get hit with higher charges. Yet you have someone in one of the "cleaner" models doing 30k miles a year and they might have little or no ved to pay. Likewise with fuel and car/van benefit. Doesn't matter whether you do 500 or 50000 miles a year.

Yes, I could have rejected just the fuel benefit. However, the company have gradually eroded the quality of the cars that we are able to select from over the years. Ten years ago I was driving a high spec S40 and the last car was a Seat Leon. And over that time the tax burden has been increasing significantly.

When I looked at the numbers this tax year the car and fuel benefit would have cost me £438 per month. Now I can run a car for that sort of money so giving up the car would be pretty much cost-neutral based on the tax alone. (By giving up the car and increasing my salary sacrifice pension contributions I managed to drop myself out of the 40% tax bracket altogether)

I therefore asked my employer for an allowance instead of a car and explained the circumstances. The response was ' your tax issues are not our problem'. A position that, in my view is a little short sighted as they would save money and so would I. Therefore, part of my motivation in giving up the car is to force their hand because, now they are trying to find a solution for the business milage that I do. You could say that it put me in the 'driving seat' as fart as this discussion was concerned.


As things stand it looks like the compromise will be that they will continue to pay for all my fuel as before and I will agree to use the car for business. A good compromise in my view as the cost to me will only be my tax liability of 20% of my fuel bill. On this basis I am financially well ahead of the game by giving up the car.