Yet another company car question..

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Just after a sense check to my thinking on the car vs. allowance conundrum that pops up and bores everyone now and again.

My position is this.

Option a)

Source the car myself, with a net allowance of £300 pcm. Insurance is covered by the company, but all other aspects are my responsibility. There are some restrictions on the car, in terms of age but otherwise I am free to choose what I want.

Option b)

Get a company car and have everything paid for, but pay tax.

Now to make the comparison objective, I am trying to factor in running costs that I have to cover when looking at sourcing the vehicle myself, as well as the cost of the car (assuming I take a PCP agreement with minimal deposit, ignoring the balloon payment). All calculations are based on 4 years.

TLDR:

If the car costs £150 on BiK tax. I have £450 (£300 allowance + £150 tax) to fund my privately sourced option to get back to the same point.

Am I missing anything?
 
So mileage aside, I'm pretty much there?

Does anyone have some good recommendations for private sourcing outside of main dealer PCP deals? I read another post that private leasing is a possibility, but is generally the most expensive option.

Obviously good deals in any situation change what's best but if anyone has some good sites to look at would be grateful
 
Not chosen anything. It would be new, so whatever I want within reason. Probably consider an A6 black sort of level as top whack, realistic would be more Passat GT or Octavia vRS

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Best place to start is probably with the brokers like drivethedeal or broadspeed (orange wheels? is another) and see what they are offering - normally you'll see discounted price then pcp example from the dealer network that will be providing the car. Annual mileage is going to play a big part in this, might be better going HP if it's quite high - at which point a year old example is going to be much more attractive.

I will say though that unless you've got a mightily healthy deposit I don't think any sort of decent A6 is going to happen, though the Passat and Octavia could be much more in reach (so long as you're ok spending the whole allowance on the physical car)

Check leasing sites too if you're not massively fussy on the actual car and again assuming annual mileage is relatively low
 
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I will say though that unless you've got a mightily healthy deposit I don't think any sort of decent A6 is going to happen, though the Passat and Octavia could be much more in reach (so long as you're ok spending the whole allowance on the physical car)

I agree you would have to put a big deposit down or be doing about 8 thousand a miles a year to get a an A6.
 
I'm not surprised if there are plenty people asking about this sort of thing - my wife's just been offered a company car and there has been no real direction as to where to go for a full breakdown on the costs and what the most financially beneficial way of proceeding would be.

I'm more annoyed that I just recently bought a brand new car as a 2nd vehicle, only to find out she's just been offered the exact same car! So now I have to sell it already. What a waste of money.

I pay £340 a month (after a £5k deposit) and it'll cost her £190 in tax, which includes all fuel for private use. That is less than what I thought - loads of people at work were saying company car scheme was pretty bad but unless I'm missing something she's getting the same car for a lot less, and there is no depreciation, no fuel, no insurance no maintenance/service etc.

I guess the one thing is that the fuel tax is £60 a month, and I'd never use £60 a month private fuel - but we could start taking long trips for days out - but then the agreement will have a set milleage so it'll depend on what that comes out as - otherwise that's a factor which could favour taking the allowance.

Bit irritated the company have not really provided much info on it all though and are not giving me much time to sell one of my cars. I'll not be impressed if I spend any motnhs with 3 damn cars on the drive!!

Initially, I just asked why we can't convert our car into a company car...it's the same model other than the extra bhp as I went for the 183 model.
 
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You need to know what the equivalent car allowance is to work out any sort of value for money with the scheme.

(Car allowance-Tax&NI)+(Net Mileage payments) - (Net BIK deductions) = equivalent amount to play with.

To make it even more difficult you should also compare the amount brought in via HMRC 45p/25p per mile business mileage with the above.

If however there is no allowance and she does little to no business miles then unless you don't actually require a car it would be difficult for it to be a terrible idea.
 
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£300 a month is quite a lot to run a car tbh. My tuned up Focus ST cost me less as a daily driver and that was far from efficient. Now I run a new Fiesta ST and the costs are litteraly half :)
 
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You need to know what the equivalent car allowance is to work out any sort of value for money with the scheme.

(Car allowance-Tax&NI)+(Net Mileage payments) - (Net BIK deductions) = equivalent amount to play with.

To make it even more difficult you should also compare the amount brought in via HMRC 45p/25p per mile business mileage with the above.

If however there is no allowance and she does little to no business miles then unless you don't actually require a car it would be difficult for it to be a terrible idea.

Cheers, I'll pass that on to make sure she's worked it all out....I guess her thoughts were that out of 20+ other company cars in the company, only 2 made use of the allowance and all her colleagues when she transferred recommended that it was more most effective to do it that way. So guess plenty others worked all that out already! But still worth looking at anyway.

As I say, was just surprised that this wasn't readily available - shouldn't have to come to a forum to find out about it! But knowing the staff in HR here that's not surprising.

She'll be doing a lot of business miles as she's regional manager for one of our southern regions and we live up north. And I work at the same company so I am automatically fully insured to drive it. It does mean when she's not away our car will never get touched....
 
£300 a month is quite a lot to run a car tbh. My tuned up Focus ST cost me less as a daily driver and that was far from efficient. Now I run a new Fiesta ST and the costs are litteraly half :)

Indeed, but the Op wants more bang for his buck.

For a car such as what you have mentioned he would be quid's in ..but for an
A6 that's another story.
 
Cheers, I'll pass that on to make sure she's worked it all out....I guess her thoughts were that out of 20+ other company cars in the company, only 2 made use of the allowance and all her colleagues when she transferred recommended that it was more most effective to do it that way. So guess plenty others worked all that out already! But still worth looking at anyway.

As I say, was just surprised that this wasn't readily available - shouldn't have to come to a forum to find out about it! But knowing the staff in HR here that's not surprising.

She'll be doing a lot of business miles as she's regional manager for one of our southern regions and we live up north. And I work at the same company so I am automatically fully insured to drive it. It does mean when she's not away our car will never get touched....

Actually where I've written '-bik deductions' that should be a plus - the difference between having the allowance (an addition) and losing some salary for the car

Tbh most people don't really understand this and its certainly not something your average HR rep will be trained in
 
Thanks all for the reponses. I'll disregard mileage, simply because my bus. mileage will be minimal each year but understand why it's a factor.

Net allowance + BIK payable = own vehicle + running costs
 
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