Company car fuel reimbursement - any experts in?

Firstly, those rates are very low. They may (or may not) cover the cost of the fuel, but they're not accounting for the wear and tear and the depreciation that the additional mileage will put on the car.
The government guidance is 45p/mile for the first 10k, 25p there after.
In theory, this means you can claim the difference back on your self assessment.

Edit, we get paid at government rates irrelevant of what we drive.

It's a company car so no cost of depreciation / wear and tear etc incurred by the employee. The 45p figure isn't applicable here (unless the OP is on a car allowance and owns/leases the car privately but it doesn't sound like that's the case).

Afraid I'm with HR on this...but mainly out of personal experience -

I was getting 45p a mile for any driving I had to do that wasn't to my office (personal car not company or salary sacrificed)...3 years ago (about 2 months before Covid came in), the company decided that all journeys by all staff would get paid at the company car allowance - so that went down to 11p - regardless of whether or not it was a personal car or company car (although thankfully since Covid, I don't need to do the drives, so although I'm happy to moan about it, I don't actually get impacted by it now). I was doing enough for each trip to get me about £5 more than the tank of fuel so was happy as fuel was covered and the extra went to car servicing, but after it went to 11p, I wasn't covering half the tank of fuel, so was spending more.

You are saving a heap on tax and the wear and tear will be for the company to pay for...so that isn't really a concern. If all you are paying for is a number of journeys where you don't win the pay back game, then that is the luck of the draw.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advisory-fuel-rates

Worth a read.
The rate for electric cars is 9p per mile

Isnt the 45p rate for if you use your own vehicle, rather than a company car?

Mrs Oddie works for a large automotive firm (they own Cinch), they have just reduced their per mile rate for business use.

So somewhat ironically lots of staff are now using Uber/Taxis/Trains to get to business meetings in city centre locations as they can claim the costs back rather than drive their company cars and be out of pocket.

When the meetings are out in the sticks at some industrial park then they drive and just take the hit.

Just to clarify - both my current BMW and incoming Volvo are company cars so wear/tear and the 45p rate are irrelevant.

Thanks for the responses so far..

Chew
Free Memb https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advisory-fuel-rates

Worth a read.
The rate for electric cars is 9p per mile

Thanks for this - so it appears its the HMRC guidelines which are the issue, not our HR Dept.... grrr...

Yeah, mine is a personal car, so was just highlighting the fact others can get stung at the whim of HR changes as well.

I'm having a look just now at a new car and do fancy electric, but it would be replacing a Puggy Partner, so I'm looking at the electric Berlingo - range is pretty poor, but I'm needing the carrying capacity as it gets used at least 75% of the time. Don't have a home charger, but do have a public charging station about a 2 minute walk from the house, so that is where it'll get charged - before I do much more investigation, how much is the cost for charging at public charging stations? Is it a standard price or does it change depending on provider?

Sorry, complete thread hijack - ignore my query!!!

dont forget you can make a tax claim back from HMRC for the differnce of the HMRC rate vs company given rate. - it's a ball-ache and one that thankfully i don't have to worry about, but you should then not be out of pocket.

before I do much more investigation, how much is the cost for charging at public charging stations? Is it a standard price or does it change depending on provider?

They vary, but Charge Place Scotland ones in Stirling are still free I think.

Lucky you, ours was only 5pp/m for EV/PHEV, now it's gone to 8pp/m. I'm regretting ordering one, as the savings in BIK probably wont cover the costs of charging now. Remember that going on an 'EV tariff' might be cheap overnight, but your peak rate will be much higher than most.

but you should then not be out of pocket.

No, you'll still be out of pocket, just less out of pocket.

dont forget you can make a tax claim back from HMRC for the differnce of the HMRC rate vs company given rate. – it’s a ball-ache and one that thankfully i don’t have to worry about, but you should then not be out of pocket.

You can't claim back the difference, only the tax on on the difference. So for every £1 you're out of pocket Vs the HMRC rate you can claim back 0/20/40/45p depending on your earnings.

So somewhat ironically lots of staff are now using Uber/Taxis/Trains to get to business meetings in city centre locations as they can claim the costs back rather than drive their company cars and be out of pocket.

TBH, and as someone who has previously made a significant proportion of my income doing interstellar miles at 45p/mile in cheap cars, this really should be the default. Whilst employees shouldn't be out of pocket, the current system paid me £20/hour tax free (after paying for fuel) just to drive on the motorways, that's bonkers.

We have the same problem. Paid xp per mile if it’s an electric car, but that doesn’t cover fast chargers. For a lot of the team that’s a huge pain as we can be all over the country. Company car policy mandates electric vehicles. The solution for me is to not use the company car scheme, take car allowance instead. This way I just about break even on the mileage allowance (but also own the car so am quids in per month on the car allowance).

We get the HMRC advisory rate and suck it up. There has been an increase in people using public transport for longer trips where they might otherwise have to charge their electric cars. Maybe that is a good thing but journey times are often shocking compared to getting in car and driving.

The 69p rate will drop once the energy price drops, so you’re only talking a few months and possibly a few journeys. Also, there plenty of chargers that offer cheaper rates.

You got a shiny new car which you chose for tax/financial reasons and are now saying it’s too expensive for a small number of journeys you may have to undertake.

Also 400miles - £70 out of pocket? Really? Most EVs will do around 3m/kWh. So 135kW even assuming you paid the full 0.69p for the whole journey (which he didn’t) that would be £92 of which you’d claim £44 back.

In reality the car would’ve been fully charged at home, so pessimistically you he paid half the journey at 69p/kWh so £46, and half at 32p/kWh, so £66 of which he claimed £44 back.

If you have an EV tariff, that brings it even further toward neutral and that’s while we have high energy prices!

Count yourself bloody lucky!

The 69p rate will drop once the energy price drops, so you’re only talking a few months

Does that comment come with any kind of guarantee ? Just not sure it'll age well that's all.

My oppo at work did a 400 mile round trip in his earlier this week in his lecky car and is about £70 out of pocket – HRs response is basically ‘you’re saving loads of tax over a diesel car so suck it up’
This can’t be right as if 1 month i do 1000 miles, but my oppo does nothing (or vice-versa) one of us is going to be seriously out of pocket.

Anyone else got some experience of this situation? what have your employers put in place?

Same in our place, could only order an EV. Wen't to see a load of customers in scotland, circa 900 miles, first 240 was on the home charge and after that a mix of 90p fast charge, 50p public and a couple of free ones. Fair bit out of pocket

Made it quite clear that I'd happily hand the company car back and have a truck/van and leave it parked up in the yard.

HR and managements view was that we are saving on the tax, its very one sided when the minions are doing all the miles and they seldom go out.

I'll just limit where I go to make sure I'm not out of pocket, unless there is a half decent free charger at the other end. When our team is making a fair chunk of profit per person, it smacks a little.

There's a PodPoint charger near here that is currently charging at £1 per kWh - madness.

When I last had a company car - 10+ years ago - I also had a fuel card which I paid tax on but effectively paid for all my mileage both work related and personal. This was great for me at the time as I was often off to trail centres etc. at weekends.

Does a similar thing exist where you could have a card for something like Octopus Energy Electric Juice which could be billed back to the company and taxed as a benefit in kind?

That would solve the "unfairness" issue and reduce admin costs - might be worth some research and then a proposal to your company.

when I see threads like this it confirms my belief that at the moment electric cars are less than ideal for actual business use.

thankfully we are staying with diesels for as along as humanly possible for range, carrying capacity and most importantly easy fuel card management.

when I see threads like this it confirms my belief that at the moment electric cars are less than ideal for actual business use.

This is only true if the employer is an idiot. The employer can set a reasonable re-imbursement rate base don real world costs, the examples above are employers taking the wee wee. I think it's also possible to have an account for many of the chargers that could be directly billed to the employer so if you have to charge on the road those miles could be paid for directly by the employer.

when I see threads like this it confirms my belief that at the moment electric cars are less than ideal for actual business use.

thankfully we are staying with diesels for as along as humanly possible for range, carrying capacity and most importantly easy fuel card management.

Our mobile Engineers are of the same opinion.. Typical week for them might involve driving from the South Coast to Barrow with a car full of tools so a big Diesel Estate rather than an electric car is much more suitable.

For those of use predominantly desk-based, the savings in P11D value + lower costs per miles for either personal miles or when commuting make electric cars a no brainer, It just looks like we're going to get screwed over on longer journeys for the foreseeable..

The high fast charger costs do count against you here.

In my case, my current company car (Countryman) and next one (Mazda CX60) are PHEV's. I only charge at home thereby using electrical power for short journeys. Long business journeys use the petrol engine (obviously with some regeneration) but then use HMRC rates dependent on petrol engine size.
Yes my BIK is significantly higher than a pure EV but you don't 'lose' out on fuel costs for work mileage.
To cheer yourself up, you might want to look at the maths for say a Mazda CX60 (12% BIK) vs your EV car. Maybe the offset in terms of what you will pay extra using motorway charging will still be fine when you consider the overall BIK saving?
Alternatively, are you forced to have an EV car? Is there still time to cancel order and maybe look at a PHEV?

No idea about EV ppm but when the company I work for tightened up on fule & mielage payments I stopped driving in my own time, made no difference except for shortening my week 🙂

Their choice.

The employer can set a reasonable reimbursement rate based on real world costs, the examples above are employers taking the wee wee.

...if the employer pays above the HMRC rates then the individual has a tax liability on the difference, which will be a burden.

The HMRC EV rate is 9ppm, as posted earlier, so that is likely to be the default for many employers. I know of folks who have lease EVs through work and choose to use hire cars for business use, in which case they receipt the fuel used through expenses, rather than use their EVs and be out of pocket on longer trips. This does no good for employers working on their carbon footprint. I think I heard that the HMRC are updating their rates imminently, which would be good.

We cover a pretty big patch each with a BEV but we get an "electric fuel card" so I only charge at fast chargers on motorways, no home charger. I get to use the car for personal mileage as well. The BIK on a BEV is 2%, adding in the fuel, it's still only 2% total. Ask your employer for a fuel card for the chargers.