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I have been asked on many occasions about salary sacrifice schemes, whether they are available to small companies and if brokers such as I can provide them. The answer has been no and unfortunately, due to the high set up costs, look to remain so. I was at a meeting yesterday at Buckingham University at which one of the UK’s leading providers of Read more »

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There seems to be a move back to company cars from cash for car alternatives. A few years ago when the Government changed the way the benefit in kind tax was calculated to a CO2 based system there was a big move to cash for car alternatives. Drivers liked the idea of driving a 3 year old BMW rather than a new Ford Mondeo but BMW’s are Read more »

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One of the smaller changes to the benefit in kind tax rules following the budget was the removal of the upper limit when applied to company run prestige cars. In the past there was a limit placed on the list price used when calculating personal benefit in kind tax of £80,000. This has now been removed so taking a Bentley Flying Spur as an example with Read more »

The gap is starting to open up between petrol and diesel at the pumps again, pushing drivers towards petrol cars. There is also continued concern that people that take diesels fitted with particulate filters, as all new diesel cars have to have fitted, do not understand that they need to run the car at over 50mph for at least 20 minutes in one session per month in order to create the chemical reaction that clears out the filter. If this isn’t done the filter clogs and needs to be replaced costing hundreds of Read more »

There have been a lot of hurrah’s and yippees as Ford have dropped their list prices by up to 12% on many models in their range. Obviously it passed everyone by that in fact they increased their prices by 15.1% last year when inflation was bouncing along at a little over 0%. In fact the actual increase imposed by Ford was higher than 15.1% as the increases took place in 4 chunks and I’ve disregarded the Read more »

It would seem that companies are more environmentally aware than private motorists. According to statistics issued last year, as part of Fleet News Intelligence Report, and more recently backed up by information from the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA), average CO2 emissions from cars put onto fleet leases dropped from 149.9g/km to 144 g/km following a drop of 9 percentage Read more »

What is the benefit in kind tax position of an employee who is provided with a hire car? I could go into lots of detail as it depends on whether the employee has a company car provided and whether he has it for 30 days continuously. Whether the car is better or worse than his company car and if it’s not to replace a company car then how much of the mileage is private! Oh this is so boring, If you really want to know look it up on Google or something! I’ll just move on before I bore myself to death! By Graham Hill

Confusion is going to reign over the many issues that will surround the use of electric cars as company vehicles. Already manufacturers are developing their new electric cars with some such as Peugeot already taking reservations on their new cars. But who pays for the fuel? Cars will need to be charged at the driver’s home as well as at work so who foots the bill and how will it be proportioned between business and Read more »

Good to see that Alphabet, the car leasing company, has spotted something in the new tax rules that are to come into force next April that I reported upon many weeks ago. Under the current rules you can only charge to profit a percentage of the monthly rental cost of a contract hire lease once the cost of the car exceeds £12,000 up to a maximum of a 25% disallowance. This variable rate has now been replaced by Read more »