Budgeting for vehicle costs

[minghis]

I'm trying to get a better understanding of a budget I'm doing for my business.

The problem I have is how to factor into my costs of my vehicles. I have an idea as to how much I'm going to spend on fuel, maintenance, repairs and so on but I'm trying to figure out how to forecast what the vehicles are costing me.

So as an example I have a vehicle I bought a year ago for £13k, as I understand it for accountancy reasons it's written down in value at 20% per year so can I assume that its costing me £2600 year 1, £2080 year 2 and so on?

Thanks in advance!

[Hammer67]

I thought the annual write down for depreciation was 20% of the original price.

So in your case £2600 per year for 5 years to reach zero value.

If you were to apply 20% of the remaining value each year it would never reach zero.

Or is that not the case?

[clockworks]

Having asked a similar question a couple of weeks ago, I was told that the write down on a low emissions (less than 130gm) car is 18%. On higher emissions cars it is 8%. It is calculated year by year on the reducing figure, not the original purchase price.

Not sure I understand the original post though. Surely the vehicle costs the business whatever you actually pay for it. The write down value is how much you can offset against your tax bill each year. Or is it different for a limited company (my question was about sole traders)?