If a car is provided by reason of an employment and is available for private use, there is ordinarily an income tax charge on an amount which is calculated as a variable percentage of the original list price, the variation depending on the level of the car’s CO2 emissions.
Not surprisingly, company cars are not as popular as they used to be, due to a combination of cost, depreciation and the tax charge. Nevertheless they account for about 50% of all taxable benefits.
Other interesting data includes the fact that there are 30 million cars in the UK, of which 1 million are company cars. Of the company cars, 250,000 involve some private use fuel being provided despite the high tax charge. This is clearly a concern and means that anyone who is provided with some private use fuel for their company car needs to review the position as the chances are that they are paying tax on far more than the benefit is really worth and they would be better off to replace the fuel with extra pay.
