Car. Business/personal vehicle hire schemes?

[ratewhore]

I leased a car through the business a few years back. When I did the maths, the difference between leasing and buying personally came to about 50 notes a month, without taking into account the fact you can put all the insurance, tax, maintenance etc through the books as well.

When I spoke to my accountant about it, he told me that when you run your own business, the difference is not as great as made out, at least when you would have to withdraw more from the company in order for you to buy the car personally.

One important difference of course is that I didn't own the vehicle at the end of the lease term. But then I didn't want to...

[Fred Bloggs]

Hmm, just reading about Company Cars. It says:



Let's say you had a partner who was NOT a director of your company and they were paid under £8,500 per year as an employee of your company then you could provide them with a company car and no reporting requirements and no tax or NICs to pay?

Of course HMRC would argue that the director had use of the car but what if the partner was the only named driver on the insurance so the director could not legally drive it?

You can't avoid the tax. You are taxed if the car is "available" for you to use. I know this because I tried to argue for not paying company car tax while my car was parked at the airport in the UK and I was overseas five days a week. My claim failed because the car was still "available" even though I was in different country.