Vehicle leasing
 

Something I know very little about but it's looking quite appealing.

Wife and I are directors of a PR company with a healthy cashflow and top credit rating.
Looking at leasing a car but know absolutely naff all about it.

Tried some variables through on-line leasing brokers and the figures coming back are pretty good.

What else do you pay on top apart from fuel, servicing and insurance?

Looking at around £500pcm - That's £6k a year but in my experience, a lot of cars lose that in a year anyway and there's no hassle getting rid of it at the end.
It's also a business expense so pre-taxed (so £500 is actually worth £600ish - sort of)

Please enlighten me and point out how stupid I am being!

Matt,

If you are leasing through the company, which it appears you will be, then the company can also recover he VAT on the monthly rental payments (assuming its VAT registered of course)

Not quite sure what you mean about "pre taxed" - are you referring to the VAT element or the fact that the cost would be an allowable expense when calculating profit for corpotion tax purposes?

Bear in mind, however, that you as an individual will incur a personal tax liability for the personal use element (and fuel if paid for by the company), as in any other company car scheme (which is effectively what you are looking at here) in relation to the taxable benefit.

Matt,

When I looked into this as a private individual rather than from a company perspective it didn't work for me. But then it depends on circumstances and what may be right for one, may not be right for another.

In my case over a 3 year period I estimated that it would cost me about £3k more to go and lease than to do a straight purchase. But then I didn't have access to tax breaks and I could afford to pay off the cost over a short period and thus reduce interest payments.

Throw in the fact that I see buying cars as a long term proposition (5 years + before change) and that if I pulled out of the deal I'd still have to pay it all off it didn't work.

It may work for you. AFAIK there shouldn't be anything else to pay - maintenace can be in or out. Watch out for the 3 month payment up front as well.

you can arrange a "fully maintained contract" for the period of the lease....taking the headache and the extra cost of this from you as well.....
this would include all servicing, mobile tyre fitting etc.......

Cheers for comments guys.
Sounds slightly complicated - better pay my accountant some more readies to "advise me" that getting a decent motor is worse than insulting all my customers!

We will see - it's time for another decent car methinks.

RR Sport ;) You cant go wrong :D

I leased my last two subarus through my sole tradership.
The first cost £605 inc VAT per month for 60k miles over 3 years with full maintenance.
The lease element will include the supply of car plus car tax.
Maintenance included servicing plus tyres, brakes & clutch and fixing non warranty items.
Only 50% of the lease VAT could be claimed but 100% of the maintenance costs.
Modfications were put down to repairs.
On top you will have to pay for insurance and fuel which were claimable for my situation (90% as the rest was put down to personal use).
The current car is only on lease (£430 inc VAT per month on same terms) as the service element was too much £150 per month. I worked out that I could beat this doing it my own way so I dropped it.
I pay no tax for using the car other than a quarterly VAT fuel contribution (70?).
Its going to be a different matter if you lease the car for a ltd co. and use it for personal use - this will attract tax for you.
The old dodge was to have the car as a "pool" car for the benefit of anyone in the company so avoiding personal tax but this may have been tightened up on.

It made sense to me as I'm paying the depreciation and don't have to get rid of a car.

Nick