Another 'Is a company car worth it' thread!

[TW]Fox;22430317 said:
Typically the allowance will be something like £400 after tax which means the true cost of a company car taxed at £90 a month is not £90 a month but almost £500 a month.
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Wish our allowances were near that lol, infact to get that after tax at my place I think you're talking very high level jobs (ones probably not far off 6 figure salaries).
 
A[L]C;22430748 said:
We get 20% car allowance up to 30k, then 10% after the 30k.
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So a 30k salary gets you £6000 of allowance so abour £4200 after tax and NI?

Still wouldn;t have got you my gf's Mondeo though.

And even somebody on £50k would only get £8000 but taxed at 40% so only have £4800 to spend on a car.
 
[TW]Fox;22430524 said:
Quite easily.

Especially when you realise for less money than a brand new Mondeo EcoDullzard edition you can have a 12 month old Titanium X edition for example..
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I was comparing like for like though and going new on both ;)

Yes, you can with allowances make a tidy profit especially if you look at buying 1 or 2 year old and then swapping every year or so as depreciation is the biggest killer on a car plus the less money you lay out, the less interest you pay (or lose on your savings)
 
Greebo said:
And even somebody on £50k would only get £8000 but taxed at 40% so only have £4800 to spend on a car.
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But would be paying even more company tax on the company car, too.

Remember, when an allowance is involved, the cost of the two options is:

a) Company car: Company car tax + opportunity cost of allowance - income from mileage claims
b) Own car: Cost of running a car - income from mileage claims
 
[TW]Fox;22430910 said:
But would be paying even more company tax on the company car, too.
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Yup it really starts to hammer you then.

After tax I think my allowance would be around £220, but you use the pre tax value on the lease, and with silly amounts of cc tax :(

As much as I was all for getting a company lease car when starting this job the longer I go on using my own and taking the cash the less inclined I am to do so.
 
In this case I am the owner of the company, but also essentially as it is a limited company I am just an 'employee' and the company does not offer a car allowance.

I looked at a few cars;

Audi A4 1.8T (was not strictly going to be this version but it just happened to be what I was looking at)

BMW 320D

VW Passat CC 2.0 TDI

Seat Leon FR Supercopa TDI

I think, whilst I do like Leon's it is not really comparable at all to the others in the list but it was certainly cheaper considering the spec it had (£55 tax)

And definitely private mileage to business ratio would be private 95% business 5%

But as TWFox mentioned - the insurance quote did not change when I mentioned business use.

Oh, and I have never seen anything so advanced as some of the BMW specifications! They even have 'rear heated seats' as an option!
 
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In which case it all comes down to how much business miles you do. I would suspect that with very little private and so long as you have enough business that you might be better off buying/leasing the car personally and charging the business miles to the company

How many business miles do you do and I'll do a quick comparison for you.
 
Pulsedriver said:
Personal miles I would say maybe 7000 a year ish
Business miles, well, maybe 100!
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In which case if you went for business mileage you would get £45 per annum (tax free) plus the, let's say £1200 per year saved on company car tax so £1245 per annum.

£103.75 a month is probably not enough to run any of the cars you listed unless you are buying quite old ones or a shed.

In which cas I suggest you do it as a company car and pay the tax.

Might even be worth having the company pay the fuel for you as a flat charge (subject to co2) but based on 15% would be £500 compared to almost £900 spent on fuel if you did 50mpg.
 
Greebo said:
In which case if you went for business mileage you would get £45 per annum (tax free) plus the, let's say £1200 per year saved on company car tax so £1245 per annum.

£103.75 a month is probably not enough to run any of the cars you listed unless you are buying quite old ones or a shed.

In which cas I suggest you do it as a company car and pay the tax.

Might even be worth having the company pay the fuel for you as a flat charge (subject to co2) but based on 15% would be £500 compared to almost £900 spent on fuel if you did 50mpg.
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If there is no car allowance alternative you are wasting your time even running numbers, unless you already own a car there is no way buying your own car beats a company car without a car allowance alternative.
 
A[L]C;22436412 said:
Greebo are you an accountant or anything? I'd like to work out how much difference my salary would be if I went for an allowance.
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What rate of income tax do you pay and what is the car allowance?

It's really easy, just add the annual car allowance to your annual salary then take off the correct rate of tax/NI - or use a site like listentotaxman.

All a car allowance does is increase your salary really.
 
Ok, I need someone to confirm this....take home was calculated with http://www.thesalarycalculator.co.uk

Base salary: 33167
Tax code: K136
Monthly Take home 1,930.23

Car allowance = 20% under 30k, and 10% for anything over

So: 20% of 30000 = 6000
10% of 3167 = 316.7
Total: 6316.7

Base + allowance = 39483.7
Normal tax code now no car, so left this blank on the site
Monthly Take home = 2448.54

Difference with car allowance = £518.31

Is that right?
 
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