Company Car vs Allowance

[decisiontime]

My Company wants to replace my co. car with an allowance. Car list value is 30000 euro, all expenses are paid by company (petrol, tax, insurance , maint etc).
I do minimal business milage, so car is part of my remuneration package. They are offering 11000 pa allowance.
Am I better of with the car or the allowance?

Some issues that concern me are :
1. allowance is not index linked
2. I will be starting my insurance with zero no claims bonus (I also have 2 penalty points).
3. Any future claim against insurance will affect my premium (this has not been the case up to now).

Also, does anybody know if either Car or Allowance are taken into account for Pension Calculations?

Can anybody offer me advice? Has anybody made this change recently? If so what has outcome been?

Thanks
DecisionTime

 

[rainyday]

1. allowance is not index linked

Yeah - My employer gets away with this also. Not nice, but there you go.

2. I will be starting my insurance with zero no claims bonus (I also have 2 penalty points).

This could be a huge issue, depending on your age. At a minimum, you will need a letter from your employer's insurer stating that you've had a company car specifically allocated to you (i.e. not a 'pool' car) and you have a clean accident history. Get a few indicitive quotes now, so you can assess the impact.

3. Any future claim against insurance will affect my premium (this has not been the case up to now).

True, but it would also have affected your employers premium in the past.

Also, does anybody know if either Car or Allowance are taken into account for Pension Calculations?

In general, no - on the basis that your employer wouldn't be providing you with a car throughout your retirement. [Unless you are Jack Welch, where your employer will provide you with the car, the jet, the penthouse apartment in NY etc]

The 11k pa seems to be in the right ballpark to me. With the allowance, you of course have the option of making some cash out of this by buying an older/smaller car (or even no car, if practical). You will have no BIK to worry about, but your allowance is taxed as normal income. You no longer have the luxury of not worrying about the bill for the next service or the next set of tyres etc.