Thrush

iTrader: (1)

Yes I do......... Sorry

We just have a fuel card - petrol station clerk swipes it and takes a mileage reading (if we actually remember to look at it before paying )

Minimum £85 a month. £15 I fucking wish! It should be about £85, but that now depends on how much I earn working, as the new tax rules mean the more I earn, then more tax I pay for having a van, even tho I do probably 50miles a week private mileage whether I do 10 jobs a week or 100.... Go figure

Iain Mac

Wiith all the mis-informed shit in this thread, I lost the will to live about half way down page one so if any of the following are already covered I'll get my coat and STFU!

1) If an employee chooses a more expensive car, or adds options like leather or aircon, he pays BiK tax on the full list price of the car and accessories, at the same % that applies from the CO2 rating. If he chooses a "gas-guzzler" that will mean 35% so if (as is common) he keeps the car for three years he will have paid tax on 105% of the LIST PRICE of the car and accessories - taking the cash would only incur tax on 100% of the BUYING PRICE (ie List price less discount). If he has to keep the car for 4 years, he's paid tax on 140% of the cost and doesn't even have the residual value of his car to show for it.

2) When the change to CO2 BiK came in, the guys with a car as a perk (sub-2500 business miles per annum) were paying 35%. The new regime meant NONE of them were penalised, and many got a discount on the previous rate if they had a more efficient car. People with cars as a genuine tool for the job (ie me, home based and covering Scotland and Northern Ireland, with our closest - only! - office in Birmingham) saw our tax go from 15% to (in my case 32% overnight.

3) That's what drove many of us to opt out of company cars and buy our own, but at 40p/mile, getting 40mpg and fuel at 96p/litre(£4.36/gallon), I get 29.1p/mile to pay for the car, service it, buy tyres, tax and insure it. But once I've done 10,000 miles in the year that drops to 14.1p/mile. But the AA say the real cost of running an ordinary car is about 43p for EVERY mile.

4) Writing Down Allowance (the "tax break" companies get that some have referred to here) is capped at a value of £12,000 so for any car that costs more than this, the company can only offset a maximum of £3000 per annum against their tax liability, calculated on the reducing balance. That means that when the reducing balance drops below £12k, their allowance reduces year on year. And the company has to make a taxable profit before this has any benefit to them at all. When the car is eventually sold the company can put a balancing charge on their accounts for any shortfall between the Written Down Value and the sale proceeds but, if the car is leased they can't so there is a permanent disallowance to the lessee (the employer). That's why the advantage of leasing is eroded from £12,000 cost upwards.

5) Similarly with fuel costs, why shouldn't the employer offset the cost of fuel used in pursuit of their business? In most cases, if your company provides staff with fuel for private use, the individual pays more tax than the fuel would actually cost. If you have to pay for your private fuel the employer "should" be reclaiming tax relief on fuel costs and the VAT thereon in proportion to business/private use. If they aren't, their auditor should pick up on this and there are big penalties.

6) It wasn't estate agents who invented the company car - they really came into fashion during the pay-restraint years of the 1970s when inflation was high and the government made big pay-rises illegal, so staff started getting cars and all sorts of other Benefits instead of more money. At the time, you were classed as "Higher Paid" and liable to BiK tax as soon as you hit £8500 per annum, and that figure didn't change till about 10 years ago when it went up to the current level of £12000 per annum. If this had really matched payscales, it would probably mean no-one would have to pay BiK unless they were on £30k (or more) each year.

JjCoDeX75

Well put Iain That is exactly the point.

Sadly, I suspect that Ginge will not take the time to read it and understand why his comments are so utterly ill informed!

JJ

SapphyMike

surely you wouldnt of expected him to anyway?

we'll just get another 60 lines of utter rubbish

dojj

iTrader: (3)

i do a few bits of company van stuff so here it is from my point of view

according to the paperwork in front of me, if you use the van to and from work, you don't pay the tax, in fact, you don't pay anytax at all

if you do private mileage and the ocmpany pays for the fuel you pay the tax, all of the tax

if you use the van and pay for your own fuel you can do so on the odd occasions but this is equally to 1 short journey a month to the rubbish tip or the like

the way to proove that you don't use the van for after hours mileage is to keep accurate mileage records and fuel recipets to show this

all our vans get taken home and back to work again because of the lack of space to park them up at night so thats that sorted, but i have to keep a mileage check of them in the morning and in the evening and now, our software that the drivers have to input their mileage into every morning is set with the amount of miles they are allowed to do over night and if this figures is excessive it won't let them do anything else on their satnav until i reset it, plus they need to tell me why
all our vans are tracked and any mileage descrepancies are seen this way as well
they also have to make sure their vans are topped up every evening when they finish work and the fuel recipts are stapled to their work for the day so this also tallies up
company policy is that there is to be no unorthorised vehicle movements unles they are work related or the drivers can face disciplinary action, it wasn't the drivers fault his van got arse ended but he wasn't supposed to be using it and he got a fair old bollocking because he didn't tell anyone he was using the van and he's had a letter sent to the tax man telling him that he uses the van after hours and he's going to get taxed for it, even though he doesn't
you lot may think that is unfair but rules is rules and he should have been sacked for it

as for the air con arguement, all our vans come fitted with air con but ebcause the fridge compressor slots into that location, the air con is no longer a useable bit of kit until the vans get dekitted and it goes back on again for their reslae value

company car drivers are a whole different kettle of fish and i'm not even going to go there, but it's a merc E class not a jag e class

JjCoDeX75

True enough! It will be interesting to see what he comes up with

Dojj

the situation is slightly different for people such as myself. I use my own car to get from the office to each of my sites that I look after. I cannot claim for personal mileage or my mileage to and from work.

Basically, if the govt cut the rate, I would effectively be paying for the privilage of getting to each of my sites! Nice!

JJ

Iain Mac

The BiK treatment is different for cars and for vans. Essentially, if you have ACCESS to a company car for personal use (whether you use it for personal use or not) the car is a taxable benefit.

Travel to and from a normal place of work in a company car (or a private car) is not counted as business mileage, so if you take a company car home the car become a taxable benefit. If the employer pays for the fuel for you to take the car home, that is also taxable - at the FULL Scale Charge for the year!

Vans used to be taxed on a flat rate of £500pa if they were available for private use, and if more than one driver shared a van the liability was split between them. Then two years ago the rules started a two-stage change. Now, there is a £3000pa Scale Charge for a van where the driver has personal use but, because they are recognised as work vehicles for engineers on call out-of-hours, lack of space for employers to park them, etc., travel from home to work in a van can be counted as business mileage and avoids BiK.

If the van driver and the employer sign an agreement like Dojj mentions, to the effect that personal use is prohibited, and maybe backs that up by changing insurance cover to "Business Use Only" the driver needn't pay any BiK but it does leave the employer exposed if the driver chooses to ignore the rule and has an accident while using the van for private use as he is then in charge of an uninsured vehicle.
Accurate mileage records are absolutely essential because while the rules say that occasional minor personal use of a van can be ignored for BiK purposes, the Govt have chosen NOT to define occasional, so who knows when they may decide to swoop?

dojj

iTrader: (3)

JjCoDeX75

is there not a permanaent place of emplyment that you rtavel to each day at a given distance from your house that yu can claim for then?

Iain Mac

"occasional" is listed in our "official" forms as "once or twice a year"

Oranoco

I use my own car for some work miles. If this goes through I'll have to drive the companies pool Astra's and Corsa's I don't know, thinking about that actually makes grabbing my mountain bike seem quite appealling

silverfox999

Ha!

I have tried to read all the litter spouted from Ginge and have - i think - boiled down his beef into one easily digested nugget (call me the John Smiths translator if you want )

I think i see where your twisted angle is coming from. I believe, please correct me if you think i have it wrong, you believe that we [essential company car drivers] swan around in aircon'd luxury all at the tax payers expense? That all your PAYE contributions pay for me sit in my 5series and live it up?

Well just to clarify, if this litter from Gordon and his henchmen pass this bill and i lose the £1,500 tax benefit it will cost me money to physically drive to my clients/customers/sites. Not get to work remember, but physically do my job.

You think thats right do you? You think i should fund my firm in making a profit and that i should take a pay-cut to fund that?

If you were in charge you would have us all running around in Trabants ffs!! And don't get me started about using a Ka to carry my suitcase around for work you gimp!! I do 30-40k a year!!! i don't think a Ka could cope!!!

Iain Mac

For us car drivers, the miles to and from our regular workplace are classed as commuting so are private miles. Just to keep it interesting, more rules apply if you go directly to another location or via your permanent workplace, and whether the stop at the permanent workplace was substantive or incidental.
If you live 20 miles from the office, but have an early appointment with a customer 20 miles further on and go there straight from home, you can claim for all those miles. If you stop at the office to drop off paperwork, you can still claim for the home-to-office and office-to-appointment legs. But if you stop off for a meeting at your office first you are only entitled to relief for the office-to-appointment leg.

The best solution is to have your job made field or home-based (sounds like it already is). That way, if you can demonstrate that you don't have a single, regular place of work so don't commute to an office each day you may qualify for full relief - but they are clamping down on this and if you go regularly to any place for more than 24 months it may not be allowed.

Provided your employer agrees and confirms it in writing, just start claiming those miles while you still can!!! More info here: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/eimanual/eim32366.htm
and here: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/helpsheets/490.pdf

How your company chooses to define occasional (I should have used the preferred term - insignificant) is of no significance (couldn't help myself!) to the taxman, but I don't see any issue with this definition (there I go again!) being applied - it is probably tougher than what the Government have come up with. The HMRC website provides the following "help":

Meaning of insignificant private use

The word ‘insignificant’ is not defined, so it takes its normal English meaning. For example, the New Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, “too small or unimportant to be worth consideration”.

Private use is to be considered insignificant if it is:

* insignificant in quantity in the tax year as a whole (i.e. a few days at most)
* insignificant in quality (e.g. a week’s exclusive private use is clearly not insignificant)
* intermittent and irregular
* very much the exception in terms of the pattern of use of that van by that employee (or their family or household) in that tax year
* insignificant in absolute terms, not merely as a proportion of other use.


Some of the attitudes displayed in here demonstrate the fundamental trouble with socialism and communism - the desire to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator and have the State decide what you get to do/drive/spend your money on.

Personally I think that if you work hard you deserve something extra and, whatever amount you earn you are better qualified to spend it than some commie bureaucrat (who will, by the way, have sorted out a few "perks" for himself and his cronies along the way!)

EIL132

Can I just put all this into context from what I could be bothered to read. Ginge is clearly talking about the need for a company vehicle, everyone else is spouting about using their own car for journeys over a van or supplied company car for work. I work for the council, i.e. the government and their rule is to use your own car for work. Yes there is a small amount of vehicles leased by them for use, but it is literally 2 cars for 150 workers and 1 of them is for the sole use of 1 person who delivers mail. We are arguing that the cost of fuel, running costs, etc has risen far beyond the negotiated price of 40p a mile some 6 years ago, which in turn effects everyone that has a car used for commercial purposes as that is what it is based on. They have as usual hit back by trying to shaft us and making everyone else pay for it, even though if we do not use our own cars they will not have a service to run

GazzaG

Another fucking way to steal money, jesus fucking crist,

we pay enough tax and insurence to drive on roads that are never repaird, thats more wheeltrims to replace, alloys, tires, suspension airms, springs ect

it all adds up, the money tree never stops fucking growing for them.