Company Car Policy, can you be forced to take one?

Peace

Hi Folks,

The company i work for are thinking of implementing a new company car policy. Basically they are going to force any employee that is offsite for more than a certain percentage of their time to take a company car.

Is it legal for them to force this on their employees? A company car will essentially reduced an employees take home pay by introducing BIK taxes into the employees tax liability.

Personally i don't want a company car but i am off site with clients for up to 80% of the working week. Also my car costs me very little and the BIK would cost me more than what my car costs me to run.

Comments welcome.

aidan_walsh

Would you not be able to reclaim the costs incurred against you by the car at the end of the month, or whatever period?

seamus

Well, it would essentially be a change in contract because it's a change in payment terms. And they can't change your contract without your approval.

Speak to someone well in advance to make it clear that you have an objection - see if there's an agreement you can come to, such as an increase in salary to cover it. Assuming that the company are going to pay for petrol, tax and insurance, I'm extremely surprised that the BIK works out more expensive than using your own car.

To clarify, are they planning on providing each of you with a vehicle, or just asking that you take a car from the vehicle pool when going offsite? In the latter case, I don't think BIK is payable.

Peace

seamus wrote:

Well, it would essentially be a change in contract because it's a change in payment terms. And they can't change your contract without your approval.

Speak to someone well in advance to make it clear that you have an objection - see if there's an agreement you can come to, such as an increase in salary to cover it. Assuming that the company are going to pay for petrol, tax and insurance, I'm extremely surprised that the BIK works out more expensive than using your own car.

To clarify, are they planning on providing each of you with a vehicle, or just asking that you take a car from the vehicle pool when going offsite? In the latter case, I don't think BIK is payable.

Things are a little shady so far. Up until now it has always been assigned cars which means BIK is in effect. If it were pool cars then yes there would be no BIK issue.

I kinda thought that it would be a change in contract for them to force a company car on someone. If they were trying to push it on me then i would be recouping the costs in the form of a salary increase that would cover my BIK payments.

My car turns out almost the same to run as the cost of the BIK would be for a company car.

My only objection is the type of car they would try to give me. If it was of decent size and spec then i wouldn't mind too much (but i#d still make them give me the salary increase to cover the BIK costs!!!).

Sure we'll have to wait and see!

the_syco

Questions:

Does company car have company logo on it? If so, they may want a "professional look" to their onsite engineers.

Do you need to goto dodgy area's? They may want to cover there asses from a otential claim were your car to be damaged whilst doing an onsite.

Peace

the_syco wrote:

Questions:

Does company car have company logo on it? If so, they may want a "professional look" to their onsite engineers.

Do you need to goto dodgy area's? They may want to cover there asses from a otential claim were your car to be damaged whilst doing an onsite.

Hi Syco,

At the moment none of the company cars have logo's on them but i wouldn't rule anything out in the future!

I don't usually have to go to dodge area's. I tend to visit business premises. Can't really think of anywhere when i was worried about my car. Chances are the company i am visiting will have car parking spaces.

rebel.ranter

I know in the UK the company car rules changed a few years ago to cause the BIK be based on CO2 emissions. That coupled with the management costs for running a fleet of company cars meant that a lot of employers & employees over there opted to go down the route of private cars with allowances. The employees avoid the CO2 based BIK tax on the larger cars they wished to drive, management avoided the running costs of the system.

However I think that some new H&S laws came into effect relatively recently which has made employers responsible for employees driving for work, meaning that they were in some way responsible for ensuring that employees had their private cars in good order. The preference from companies has now shifted back to using company cars as a result.
Maybe this is what's driving your company?

athtrasna

Don't forget the impact it may have on your no claims bonus - you'd only be a named driver if the company take out the policy.

It happened one of our guys, had a company car for 5 years and his insurance was astronomical when he changed jobs and had to get his own car and insurance.