Pool car / company car

Why not phone them and ask them?

If the company makes a car available to an employee for private use - even for a short period - then a taxable benefit arises.

A pool car which is regularly parked overnight outside an employee's home might point towards private use.

There may be specific guidance about pool cars on the IR's website somewhere.

Robin

A pool car can't be taken home, and needs to genuinely have more than one driver. We are having an argument about this at work. We have nowhere safe to leave a pool car so it suits the company and the employee to take it home, but the company are now trying to submit it to the revenue as a taxable benefit.

Neb

"Nebulous" wrote

Eh? Why do you say that? In my younger days as an employee, I regularly took a pool car home. "7am starts" the following day were difficult otherwise!!

"Nebulous" wrote

Agreed. So each different driver can take the pool car home, when they happen to have the car....

They were t' days. T' tram down into town, see "South Pacific" in CinemaScope, steak and chips, get blind drunk and change out of a shillin'. An' if tha telled that to t'kids today they'd not believe yer. They'd not believe yer!

A journey from home to work and visa - versa is always a private journey. Even if you've got a 4-00 am departure to Timbuktoo.

The IR will want their pound of flesh in terms of car benefit, and AIUI there is no provision for proportionality in the current car benefit rules. You either have it or you don't. So as I see it you'd pay the same tax, or rather suffer the same reduction in allowances, (for the same vehicle) as if the MD got the firm to furnish him with a 4x4 S.U.V. exclusively for his wife to use to go out buying hats.

DG

I think that you are wrong. It may be taken home in the circumstances that the OP describes. But I think the personal use has to stop at this point. Taking it home on a friday, in preparation for use on Monday and then having a weekend away using it, is a non starter tax wise

I think the OP's scenario said that this was the case. The car would be taken home each day by that day's 'on call' person. Presumably that person changed each day with a rota.

If there is nowhere safe to leave the pool car:

where does the employee leave his car when he takes the pool car home?

OR

How does the employee get to/from work the morning before and the evening after his day with the pool car?

Methinks that this pool car is used by only one person, so it isn't a pool car.

There are special rules for "what happens if an employee takes a company car home each day because there is nowhere safe to park it at the employers location" but I suspect that it is too late to comply with them

tim

Its a bit more complicated than that. Mon-Fri it is used by one person who gets the bus in on Monday morning and home on Friday night.There isn't a parking space at this persons base. Surrounding streets are difficult to park. Friday to Monday it is used by a variety of people and parked somewhere else miles away.

I'm getting a bit confused with all these Tims. Could you tell me what the rules are?

thanks

Neb

If the 'person' who uses it Mon-Fri each week is the same person methinks you fail 15.1 (c)

tim

Supposing there are 3 different (!) people on the on call rota. The wole working year is covered. So an individual on the list has the car at home overnight for 122 days.

The whole caboodle is shot down by 15.1 (d) & 15.1 (e) and 15.2 in conjunction with 15.1in conjunction with 15.1 (e).

I think we can all see why my and the OP's accountants aren't keen to argue this out with the revenue.

DG

Same here. Nowhere safe to leave it...

Even if this use is still whilst 'working' i.e. on-call

Which would be the case,.

Each week.

Yep. There are, in fact, 3 of us.