As most of you will know from April 02 the Company car tax regime will alter and will severely impact on high business miles car users(with 'free' fuel)such as me -from 15% to c35% of car's list price +extras/mods.

The Scooby(MY99PPP) will have to go !

-I intend buy it from the company and either(try to) persuade my wife to flog her MGF and run the Scoob,or will keep it garaged and available for weekends/track days etc

Help please.

What decent car(if any),budget £30K, will be available within the 15% tax bracket(below 150/160 emissions?)Ideas welcomed.

PS As you will have gathered I hate paying tax!

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by tobyholly:
<B>What decent car(if any),budget £30K, will be available within the 15% tax bracket(below 150/160 emissions?)Ideas welcomed.
[/quote]

Nothing I'm afraid - at that level you're stuck with diesels (and have a 3% surcharge) although the new VAG diesels have their advocates. At around 210 you can get turbocharged volvos, saabs & the BMW sixes

If you hate paying tax then you're better off getting a car allowance (if your company offers it)- I reckon it's saving me over £100 net/month

Ed

Toby,

The other alternitive is to opt out of your scheme, and to run your scooby by yourself.

My company will pay me the money into my salery, instead of the lease company.

I dont pay a large amount of tax, and I get to drive a scooby. Perfect..

Dont know what company you work for, but speak to your bos.

My only con is I loose my fuel card.

I am sure that all employers offering a company car have to employees now have to offer the cash alternative. Check it out.

Toby,

I take the cash as an alternative to the company car scheme. This means that I do pay for insurance, serviceing, tyres etc etc..........BUT, effectively the car is paid for by work, and after 3 years, it's mine.

Therefore, in 3 years time, with approx. 60,000 miles under its belt, my 330D Sport is all mine. It'll still be worth the thick end or £15k too. Nice http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/biggrin.gif I wonder how much an X-reg Scoob will be worth then? http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/frown.gif

Just take the cash.

Matt

I agree with Matt, although everyone's circumstances will be different if they are leaving a company car scheme.
For myself I would lose the fuel card and would then have to pay for all my fuel whereas now it's part of my salary package.
However without a company car my tax bill would fall dramatically to offset the fuel card loss. Basically my monthly tax bill for the car and fuel card equates to £240 so I would be that much better off when I get out of the scheme plus the money I get from my company as an allowance.
Therefore I'm now looking at a 5 door Scooby as a first choice opt out, as well as the BMW 330dse touring and an Audi S3 ...

If I go up to the hilt in my co. car scheme I *could* get a M5 and a petrol card. I would pay about £7K tax (a pound for every hour in the year!!!) ... but I'd have a fully expensed (capital cost, insurance, tax, servicing, consumables and private petrol) £50K car - and a big smile I suspect.

I've lost at least £7k depreciation on our UK MY00 Scoob in the last year which we bought new with our own money, plus had to finance the insurance, servicing and petrol - so if I'm happy to 'lose' £7K per year ( http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/wink.gif) then do I do it with a Scoob or an M5? A no brainer, I'm afraid - but I bet the M5 bulletin board is a bit sad http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/smile.gif

Or have I got something fundamentally wrong???

...and of course with 5000cc and 400hp, the M5 emissions are so far off the top of the scale that when the tax goes up in 02/03 and 03/04 for the cars in the middle emissions brackets, the M5 is still off the top and the tax stays the same! http://bbs.scoobynet.co.uk/wink.gif

Martin
...unless the new Chancellor changes things(always for the worst) in an intervening budget!

...thanks for listening to me thinking out loud...

If I take the money instead, I'd:
- not pay the £7K per year tax
- get c.£1K/month extra salary (but then taxed), say £7k net
- lose the petrol card.

So I would be £14K a year better off in terms of income(??) ... but I'd have to buy a £50K asset, and then insure, service and petrol it.

If I did that and the value at the end was £20K(?), I do 40K miles per year, and servicing and tyres aren't exactly cheap, which is the best option now?

Please someone, help me. I'm well confused now!!

Martin

This link might help :

Another very good option is to opt out and take a PCP plan.

You would pay a £2K deposit. 36 payments of £180, and give the car back at the end.

This will almost be a like for like comparison to the company car.

Check out Virgin cars. The do cheap scoobs, and good PCP's.

Chris
Sounds like a good option -it did feature in my thinking and is probably deliverable for me.You still pay the tax on the fuel benefit though -and lose any mileage allowance-or get a lower rate presumably from the company

i had to consider all this when i got my new car 6 weeks ago, plus its almost 3 yrs old now and i will have to pay same tax as a new car.

i was actually told that the bad tax yr would start next april and not this april,

no millage allowance and emission taxes are high for our car,

i think it will cost me £ 200 per month tax for a great car,

insurance would be around £ 90 per month, servicing tyres etc, depreciation each month, surely this all cant be less than £ 200 per month.

been told a 406 is the best car to get for tax etc. how boring

If you do big mileage every year, then any PCP-type scheme is going to cost an arm and a leg. There again, depreciation of your own car will be huge as well.

In my situation, the company stopped offering company cars. I had a Subaru Legacy 4CAM Lux (about £24k on the road) which the company rated at around £600 per month. I asked about a PCP on the same car and the best I could get was £850 per month. The company upped my salary by £450 per month when the company car went back so, to drive the same car with all costs paid by someone else, I'd have been around £400 per month worse off (not taking the tax saving into account, but I pay tax on the £450 anyway).

I spoke to my dealer and asked him for a price on my 23-month-old Legacy with 65k miles on it and he reckoned £9k - a loss of £15k in less than two years. So, if I bought a similar car and ran it for 2 years, I'd have the choice of being £400 per month worse off with as PCP, or losing around £15k (say £650 per month) if I bought a new one outright.

Either way, for me as a high mileage driver, it's hugely more expensive to run my own car as opposed to having a company car and paying the tax. I compromised - I bought a 3-year-old Legacy RS twin-turbo and I'll probably run it into the ground - but I expect it to depreciate maybe £8k in two years - which is better than £15k in two years - and, with 280PS, it is a lot more fun.

I still wish the company was picking up the tab ....

Brian

Car allowance seems to be the answer my friend, I am given a £400 net monthly allowance and fuel (business of course) is paid at 15p per mile and each April I am able to claim back from the taxman a further amount due to the mileage covered (20k plus) which I am told equates to approx £2 - £3k, pays for the summer holiday........all this and for the first time I have a wopping great tax code 653 unlike the usual k code representing negative tax. This seems to be the way more people are going, I'm sure the government will be keeping their beady eye on this situation so grab it while you can !