Self employed - tax question - can I claim a car?

I am self employed, I work from a home office and do not employ anyone else.

I own a car which I use for work/home use and currently claim 40p a mile to see clients.

I would like to buy a new car, but can't seem to find any info on the gov tax site about claiming anything back for tax purposes.

I understand that I can either claim the 40p a mile OR part of the car insurance/tax/servicing etc, but still no mention of claiming all or part of the car cost.

Thanks in advance.

Reply to
Dave Angel
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The mileage allowance is deemed to include an element for depreciation, and therefore you cannot claim part of the cost of providing the car if you use the 40p a mile method. You can only do this if you claim on the actual costs basis (the "OR" part of your last paragraph above).

You would then claim capital allowances. Basically each year you can claim 25% (or £3000 if smaller) of the acquisition cost of the car on a reducing balance basis (claim 25% in year 1, then 25% of the rest in year 2, etc). Both these capital allowances and the running costs would of course be apportioned on the ratio of business miles to total miles in each year.

Irrespective of which of the two methods you use, you can also claim the (business proportion of the) interest on any loan taken to buy the car.

If you wish, you can change from the 40p method to the actual costs method, or back again, but you can only do so when you change the car. Once you've used one method for a particular car, you're stuck with that method for as long as you keep the car.

Reply to
Ronald Raygun

Thanks for the detailed reply. That all makes sense.

Reply to
Dave Angel

Just one thing to add to RR's summary.... The 40p option is not open to you if your t/o exceeds the VAT threshold - currently 64k pa.

Reply to
Martin

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