Tax And Your Car   

   Tax And Your Car



Getting Tax Back On Your Car












Will The Tax Office Pay for Your Car?


Using Your Own Car For Business

The use of personal cars on business mileage has become so common in the UK in recent years that a new phrase has been coined to cover it.

'Grey fleet user' refers to any employee using a personal car rather than a company car for business travel.

If you are a grey fleet user you might get a monthly cash allowance to help towards the running costs, or be reimbursed by your employer for each business mile that you use your own car on your employer's business travel.

The Tax Office Will Help

HMRC will help you with your running costs for business motoring; the mileage payments you get from your employer can be free of tax and NICs in certain circumstances, subsidising the cost for every mile you travel on business.

You can also get tax relief on your monthly cash allowance through the PAYE system.

Picking the Right Car

There are limits to the amount of money that can be paid tax-free and, combined with the current pricing of cars, and particularly electric cars, means that some are, in effect, unaffordable for grey-fleet users.

So to help you pick an affordable car for grey fleet business travel we've calculated the running costs for cars and compared them to the tax-free mileage allowances to help you maximise HMRC's contribution towards your next car

At a glance our calculator will show you whether you would win or lose by using a particular car for business travel and you can look for cars that will cost less to run than HMRC's tax-free allowances.

We've calculated the tax-free running costs for petrol, diesel, hybrid end electric cars and you can even compare them side-by-side.

Let's get you started by explaining the tax rules.





    The Tax Rules   




The Tax Rules


Background

If you use your own car on business travel for your employer you will normally be eligible for tax relief on the car's running costs.

Similarly, if you give up a company car and take a cash allowance instead you will normally stop paying tax on company car benefit and instead pay tax on your cash allowance, but you can then offset some of your car's running costs against tax.

You get your tax relief through a mileage based system that gives a tax deduction for each business mile travelled during the tax year. The system is called 'MAPs' (HM Revenue & Customs' Mileage Allowance Payments).

Under 'MAPs' your employer can pay you a tax-free mileage-based allowance for using your own car for business motoring.

Alternatively, you can claim tax relief for business motoring at the MAPs rates if you don't receive a mileage allowance or if your mileage allowance is less than the MAPs rate.

Current Rates

The current MAPs rates are:

  • 45 pence per mile for the first 10,000 business miles travelled in the tax year.
  • 25 pence per mile for travel over 10,000 business miles during the tax year.

If your employer pays you more for business mileage than the total allowed under MAPs then the excess amount is taxed.

We've put together a detailed guide to MAPs including worked examples and you can read it by clicking here.



    Calculating Costs   




How Do We Calculate Costs?


Our Calculations

So you can compare your car running costs to the tax free amounts available under MAPs, we take forecasts for depreciation, maintenance, fuel consumption and insurance and break these down into annual running costs for a car.

Next we apply your expected annual mileage to the costs to work out a running cost per mile.

Then we convert these costs to tables and charts - you can either stick with the headline pence per mile costs or drill down into the data and see yearly breakdowns of the forecast running costs for ICE and electric cars.

Finally we compare the car's forecast pence per mile running costs to the tax-free amounts available under MAPs to see if its running costs will exceed the MAPs rules.

We do this for each year of ownership so you can see pence-per-mile running costs from 1-5 years.

For our MAPs comparison we use the 5 year pence-per-mile running costs figure but you can use any of years 1-5 for your own comparison - just take a look at the pence-per-mile costs for the appropriate number of years of ownership.

Insurance and Fuel

Because insurance costs are personal to each driver we've given you a space to put in your own cost of motor insurance for any vehicle.

Don't worry if you're not sure what your insurance cost will be.

We've started each calculation with a standard cost of £750pa for comprehensive cover including driving for business purposes, but you can change this to your own premium instantly.

You can also put in your own details for fuel costs for both ICE and electric cars.

For an explanation of how to do this click on the '? Help button in the top right corner of the screen.

Fuel consumption for ICE and EVs

From April 2020 new car fuel consumption and emissions data has to be displayed according to WLTP standards, so we're gradually swapping our old NEDC data to WLTP as the manufacturers make it available.

Sometimes this swap does leave gaps in the data, but keep checking back with us for more up-to-date information, we're plugging the gaps as quick as we can!

And if you know a piece of information that we don't hold please do tell us!




    Pop-Ups   



POP UPS

We use pop-ups to display some of the data on this page - if your browser blocks pop-ups then you will need to allow pop-ups for our web site, otherwise you won't be able to see some of the data.


This shouldn't interfere with your settings for other websites - most browsers enable you to allow or block pop-ups from specific sites.


Look for an icon in the address bar of your browser or a message to allow pop-ups, or check your browser settings or browser help guide for more information on how to do this.


Why do we use pop-ups?

Because of the large amount of data required to compare different types of fuel, using pop-ups is the easiest way to display some of the information and calculations. If we didn't use pop-ups you would need to do lots of scrolling up and down the page to see all of the data.


We promise we won't abuse pop-ups once you have allowed them for this site. They will be used only to present vehicle data and not for advertising or other annoying material.





Annual Mileage







Mileage


Getting Started

MAPs is based only on business mileage, but your car's running costs per mile are related to the total business and private mileage you travel each year.

To get started calculating whether or not your car is affordable for business use we therefore need to know your expected total annual mileage and your annual business miles.

So:

  1. Select a total mileage (or the nearest number) from the box below. We'll use this to work out the pence-per-mile running costs for you car.
  2. Next, choose your annual business miles. We'll use this to calculate whether or not the MAPs payments you can get will cover your car's running costs on business travel.

Once you've chosen your total mileage and annual business mileage, scroll down to select the vehicles you want to check. You can look at both EVs and ICE powered cars and you can compare them side-by side too.


Total Miles





Business Miles







Display







Choose Your Display

Depending on the size of your display screen, you can choose whether to display costs for cars side-by-side or as a list.


The standard display layout is a list, but you can swap to side-by-side by clicking on the button below. To swap back to a list just click on the button again.







Choose Your Cars







How To Choose Your Cars


Choosing a Car

Click on any of the fuel types listed in the 'Your Choices' section below.

You can choose from Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid and Electric cars, but you don't have to choose a car in every category; for example, you can just choose Electric or, say, Petrol.

You can only see cars which have the appropriate type of engine for your fuel selection.

Choose a manufacturer, range and model for your running cost analysis.

Once you've made your choices under each fuel type you can view the forecast running costs per mile for each vehicle, plus a summary of whether or not the pence per mile running costs are withing the appropriate MAPs rates for your annual business mileage.

Pence Per Mile running cost for the summary are calculated over 5 years based on outright purchase from new.

If you expect to replace your car in less than 5 years you can also see a summary of pence per mile running costs for 1, 2, 3 and 4 years by clicking on the 'Cost Details' button under each car.

Coming soon you'll be able to see costs also calculated for personal leasing if you've used finance to acquire a car for business travel.

Keep Checking Here

Right now the UK is in the process of switching from NEDC to WLTP as the standard for vehicle fuel and emissions data.

In particular, electric vehicle data is still evolving and we're updating vehicle data constantly.

At the moment manufacturers are re-testing vehicles to the new WLTP standards and new battery, fuel consumption, etc, data is emerging daily.

Keep checking back with us if information about a particular vehicle you want is not yet available.

And if you have WLTP data you can share with us then do get in touch!






Your Choices




Select Your Vehicles   

You need to choose an annual total and business mileage before selecting vehicles



















    Important   



*Notes
Headline pence per mile costs calculated over 5 years - see detailed analyses for each vehicle for 1-4 years.
Depreciation costs calculated using CAP-HPI future residual value forecasts assuming clean condition appropriate to age and mileage.
Maintenance costs use CAP-HPI servicing, maintenance and repair ('SMR') cost forecasts.
Prices displayed on this web site are valid only at the time of original viewing.
Vehicle images may include options only available at an additional cost.