Company Cars - Private with mileage or lease?

[sinbadsailor]

Hi there,

I have small company and am re-evaluating my options regarding my car.
I will now be doing around the 30k mark per annum in mileage and I am starting wonder if I should go for a company car, instead of using my private car with adhoc mileage payments where allowable?

As far as I know the nature of my business means that my home/business address cannot be called my base and I cannot get mileage for trips to and from client sites? So I will not get any benefit from mileage payments really.

Can someone provide some info on company car lease options/pitfalls/benefits etc as I am starting to think that having the cost of my motor going through the company will be better off than my after tax income, especially regarding car tax, diesel, servicing etc over the course of a year

 

[ButtermilkJa]

Hi, I can't go into specifics as I'm not too up to speed, but basically I have a ltd. co., I'm working from home and my mileage would be no more than 10-15k max. Some of that would be personal use, but there wouldn't be a whole lot of opportunity to claim mileage rates.

My accountant advised me to take out a lease/hp on a commercial vehicle rather than hold on to my personal car. All expenses will be claimed from pre-tax profits: tax, doe, insurance, diesel, services/repairs etc., and then he would then take off a percentage for personal use.

However, my cousin has just set up his Ltd. co. and he will be doing around 40k miles per year. His accountant advised him to buy a commercial personally and claim mileage etc.

I guess each situation is different, and indeed each accountant will have a different view. As your mileage will be quite high it might be an option to buy the vehicle with a personal loan and claim the benfits allowed rather than put it through the company.

The civil service rates at present are; €1.28 for up to 4000 miles and €0.59 anything over 4000 miles.

So, if you were doing 35k miles, you could claim approx. €23.5k. You would have to weigh this up against what you think you could claim/save running the vehicle through the company. Benefit-in-kind is also something to remember!

 

[sinbadsailor]

Therin lies my problem, even though I will have huge mileage, it is not allowable in my line of business I have been told. Even though my office is my home, the mileage is considered to/from work (on site) which is not allowable.

Maybe I have been told wrong, but this is the reason why I am looking up the commercial route, if I could get paid mileage for the travelling I do, it would be fine.....