OK, folks. Let’s consider what’s occurring here.
If I use shorthand terms such as Dressed for Stardom folks take such out of context. They say things akin to,
“If someone turned up in a pinstripe suit with a Dunhill briefcase and furled umbrella for a job at my web design business there’s no way they’d get the job.” I had assumed that peeps had the intelligence to recognise that the phrase
Dressed for Stardom was shorthand and meant wearing the appropriate clothes
for Stardom in the arena or market they were attempting to enter. Obviously and rather sadly some could not work that out for themselves. Oh well.....
If conversely I try to avoid the above perversion of any of my shorthand expressions and explain in full what I mean by any term then I get accused of being verbose. A Classic Catch 22, isn’t it?
Equally people pose short open questions to me apparently unaware that open questions by their nature cannot be answered with a Yes or No. So invariably the answer will be far longer than the question if it was an open question. I can understand that those without even the most basic of sales training might be unaware that that’s how it works. I do find it very surprising though that Housey who professes his own Sales Management credentials is so unaware of the relation ship –
Open Question = No simple Yes or No answer to it. The answer will always be longer than the question.
Yet again when my answers to his open questions were longer than the open question itself, which is inevitable when open questions are used, I get accused of being verbose. If anyone can follow Housey’s logic I’d love a cogent explanation.
But it gets worse. Even when I fully demonstrate that any argument put against my position is invalid peeps still reiterate that argument like some demented mantra. For example, I fully answered Housey’s position that anyone who takes out a private lease without consideration of their short term career objectives is a fool. I explained that no-one would be so foolish to do that but that unforeseeable opportunities sometimes arise later out of the blue. His tenet was therefore clearly flawed. Despite that he came back again in one of his more recent post repeating that same clearly flawed mantra. Go check it out. The records show that what I’ve just said it true.
Housey, like many peeps, has used quotes which might deceive the casual observer or those who couldn’t be bothered to check. He used one quote from my posts concerning his request to me for my credentials and then commented that my reply to that request had not got to the point. Yet again perpetuating the myth of unnecessary verbosity on my part. Now folks you can take Housey’s word for it or you can go check. What actually is proven by the documentary record is that Housey ranted off his own credentials. Then he challenged mine and queried them. My reply to his request for my credentials got straight to the point. I provided my credential clearly and fully in the opening paragraphs of my reply to his request, those paragraphs covered nothing else. The choice is now yours. Either buy into the myth, no indeed the falsehood, that when my credentials were requested I did not get to the point and supply them. Or you can go check and see who is in error. I directed Housey to those the records in a later post proving that he was wrong. But I note that Housey has never admitted he was wrong or even apologised for what was effectively a clear falsehood about me (intentional or unintentional) on his part. Yeah right, and I’m the one accused of being intransient or not prepared to admit when I am wrong. I am happy to stand on the documentary evidence.
Indeed whenever I have made points folks rant without reference to the facts. Many peeps shouted about my observations and received information that corporates are starting to want people back in company cars. Indeed I cited that CSC won a prestigious award for doing just that. Peeps said that that was just leasing companies hyping their position. Again no reference to the facts. The hard verifiable facts are that there were no leasing companies on the judging panel for those awards. And, before anyone asks, neither were there any leasing companies among the sponsors of those awards either. I do accept that many folks on this thread have cited their own anecdotal evidence that in there own companies or among there clients CC’s are being phased out and replaced by CA’s. I do not challenge such for that may honestly be their own experience. I see no reason to doubt them. But it remains that the HR and Employee Directors who judged the awards, all from major well known corporates, applauded CSC’s success in getting their managers back into company cars and reducing their operating costs by doing so. It is hardly likely that those judges would ever have given an award on such a basis unless they themselves considered it to be a good idea. Wake up folks. Remember – Company Cars provided under a Salary Sacrifice Scheme bring all the same benefits for the Employer that Car Allowances do plus they provide an opportunity for the Employer to slash its Employer’s NIC liabilities very significantly and to improve its VAT recovery. Here’s one very important point. VAT recovery on cars provided under Salary Sacrifice Schemes to staff who do no business miles is not allowed. Therefore the minute any company starts such a Salary Sacrifice Scheme it is heavily motivated to get the existing CA recipients into SSS cars faster than staff that do no business miles.
Last night, daz, posted something which had me ROFL. Quite literally. He claimed that he hadn’t done the figures himself but that I should go check mine, clearly suggesting that I must be making wrong calculations. He hadn’t seen my sums either. Brilliant. Let’s get this right. He’s never done the sums himself, he’s never seen them done by anyone else and upon that basis concludes that my sums which also he has never seen are wrong. Then he accuses me of adopting an illogical position!
Now folks I’ll give you a quick negotiating tip. If the opposition can destroy your position with maths then sure as hell they will. The absence of a precise demonstration of mathematical superiority almost invariably means that the maths don’t support their position anywhere near as strongly as they would have you or others believe. I suppose there us another possibility. Despite this thread having been debates for six days and 171 posts having been exchanged not one individual has been intelligent enough to think of demonstrating my position to be mathematically unsound, despite them all claiming that it is. Errrrmmm………and those folks claim they already have plenty of smarts. Funny how it takes me to suggest a way to them as to how to potentially invalidate my position entirely, isn’t it? Especially when so many around here seem to want to prove me wrong.
Right at the start of this thread and before adopting my position I ran the sums through my head. There is not the massive financial advantage that folks would have you believe can be gained by taking a CA in this case and then funding, for example, a Mercedes C220 2.2 Cdi Blueeff Elegance, your own way remembering to ensure you factor in depreciation, insurance and maintenance. The gain over just simply taking the Mercedes C220 2.2 Cdi Blueeff Elegance Company Car that was on offer is not as massive as folks would have you believe. It is relatively insignificant.
Here’s what, daz, wrote in respect of the OP’s situation;
“As said, his allowance is such that he can purchase/finance/lease a better car. He may even come out with a little extra cash depending on what he chooses.” Remember, daz makes such a statement while admitting that he has never actually done the sums himself. And because no-one else has specifically posted the figures or shown the suppliers and costs of any approach, daz has never seen the actual sums from others either. Yet he arrives at such an unsubstantiated position.
OK, let’s try to be as fair to daz as is possible. Let’s consider a scenario that would favour his position rather than mine. So we’ll use an example where none of the notional salary (i.e. Gross Salary plus BIK value of a Company Car) pushes the recipient into the 40% bracket. That way any CA, if chosen, would not be heavily reduced by the higher rate of income tax.
Taking the CA puts £393 extra in the OP’s Net Monthly Salary after NIC’s and Tax are deducted. Might be less if pension contributions play a role but let’s be fair to daz again and ignore that.
Alternatively taking the CC causes a reduction in the OP’s Net Monthly Salary of £89.
So the difference between CA and CC is £482 (i.e. £393 + £89) in the OP’s pocket.
The question is this. Can one obtain that new Mercedes C220 2.2 Cdi Blueeff Elegance - complete with all the advantages that Company Car would provide (i.e. Insurance, Maintenance, No depreciation to factor in, etc.) - for that £482 a month? All options are open. Try a Private Lease inc. maintenance, insurance, etc. By all means try other financing options to deliver that new Merc or even an [Audi] A6 because daz suggested later in his post that such might even be possible. But if you do it by any route other than leasing then don’t forget you’ll need to also factor in Insurance for Business Use, Maintenance, Depreciation, Breakdown cover, etc. See if you can leave yourself, after having done that, with enough money remaining out of the £482 to even pay for a decent dinner for two at a reasonable restaurant. You should be able to do so apparently because everyone appears to be saying that the savings going the CA route are very substantial.
Having done that research decide for yourself if it’s worth all the hassle of going it alone. Plus whether it’s worth locking yourself into a private lease/finance plan that you would have to extricate yourself from if an excellent opportunity arrived out of the blue with a company only offering CC’s. Because as demonstrated that is the way that at least some Corporates are heading with CA’s being slowly removed in favour of CC’s funded by the Salary Sacrifice Schemes. Perhaps you’ll learn then why more and more people are voluntarily taking up Company Cars via Salary Sacrifice Schemes.
Of course the above does not factor in business pence per mile directly paid by the OP’s employers or by route of tax relief, either way the effect is 40p per business mile and from that the OP must deduct the ever increasing cost of fuel. There are a whole lot of variables here. From the opening post we know the OP does about 68 business miles a week. We had no idea as to the nature of those trips or the mpg he gets. Plus we had no idea as to whether those miles are guaranteed ad infinitum. For example, if it’s a round trip visit to a satellite site or a particular client once a week them it could evaporate if that satellite site closed or the affinity with that client changed. In the absence of such knowledge in this case and in all honesty as a general principle I believe that business miles are never guaranteed and cannot be relied upon to be set in stone. I once moved from a situation of doing at least 500 business miles a week to doing effectively no business miles simply by moving from a field management position to an office based position within the very same company and that opportunity did arrive out of the blue. Working practices change and three years is a long time. So I would never rely on the potential income/profit from business mileage to assist in finance/leasing costs.
The bottom line is that my position is nowhere near as illogical or weak as many would have you believe. Or, following those initiators like sheep without even checking, others also would have you believe.
Before I close this post I mustn’t forget…….
@ Will Gill
Your post was inherently sarcastic, a perversion of my position and irrefutably abusive of my style of approach to this discussion. I will still do you the courtesy of responding to it despite all that. I loved it. I agree with Peerzy, it was brilliant. I suspect that Housey liked it too as I see he tried to mimic your style of approach. Either that or his heartfelt ambition is to actually to one day run a book shop and he is fantasising about doing so. I better hurry up and write such a book or he’ll have nothing to attempt to give away as freebies unless he also keeps stocks of his own, “Housey’s World of Win” which also as yet remains unwritten………….
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