Appropriate Car Allowance ?

[jonby]

C8PPO said:

I work for a large corp, cars I'm entitled to include things like E250, A5, A6, 530 (inc Tourer), and my cash allowance is £7k p.a.

Do you get a mileage based allowance for fuel on top ?

[Deva Link]

jonby said:

Appreciate most of those points and had thought about most of it but it's good to see it all in one place as it summarises it quite nicely

The other thing of course is he'll be saving the company car tax that he's currently paying on the A5, which if you also supply private fuel, will be costing him quite a bit. Although he might be making up for that by using loads of private fuel!

Used cars don't usually go down too well as company cars becuase the employee still has to pay tax on their list price when new, but isn't driving a new car. That issue goes away when they opt out.

[JVaughan]

I get £370 a month, but put the extra £130 towards running a 7 seat Alhambra ecomotive.

at £500 a month all in its not cheap, but its fully maintained.

[C8PPO]

jonby said:

C8PPO said:

I work for a large corp, cars I'm entitled to include things like E250, A5, A6, 530 (inc Tourer), and my cash allowance is £7k p.a.

Do you get a mileage based allowance for fuel on top ?

I get a fuel card whch covers all my business and private fuel (and oil) - yes, on my own private car

[andy-xr]

Going from a newish A5 to a £450pcm allowance is a step backwards to me, I wouldn't thank you for it, but perhaps he's doing it for tax reasons? He'd barely get in a Mondeo at that rate, and that'd be the 1.6 Ecoboost version at that on 12k'ish miles pa

Unless he's being battered by tax I'd stay put.

ETA - PPM rates are a strange one - it'd be nice to get something around 28ppm, if you go lower than that expect people to add on a few miles here and there on their claims

Edited by andy-xr on Thursday 1st March 15:19

[Deva Link]

C8PPO said:

I get a fuel card whch covers all my business and private fuel (and oil) - yes, on my own private car

The private element of which you either repay, or pay tax on the value, of course.

It's not something I've ever had, went straight from fully paid to opting out, but I know there's something weird about the way the fuel rates vs engine size work out - my brother reckons he loses money on it each month.

[C8PPO]

Deva Link said:

The private element of which you ... pay tax on the value, of course

Yes, but I can live with paying c. 52p/litre!

[Funk]

I'm on the hunt for a new job at the moment and there's no way I would take a car allowance over a company car these days. It used to be more attractive, but considering what you're left with after tax at 40% to put down a deposit, finance and run an appropriate vehicle on £400-500 a month is nigh-on impossible. I'm nearly 33 and insurance quotes with business mileage are absurd and wipe out most of the monthly allowance after tax. Add to that the cost of tyres (my 1-series on RFTs was £1,000 to re-shod all-round) and such and I can't see how it even begins to make sense.

Plus things like insurance can hike YoY (my brother's insurance co. just hiked is premium 52% for no apparent reason) but car allowances aren't going up at the same rate to account for this.

Now that emissions are so low on things like 320ds, you pay very little in co. car tax now. That'll change though as the average CO2 drops and the Government see their revenues declining...

[Deva Link]

You're not running it on £3-400/mth, you're running it on (typcially) a grand or so.

Everyone's insurance will be different, but I have a Merc and it costs £250/yr for class 1 biz use, £100 excess. Just renewed and it was same price as last year.