Fuel Card (Private Car) - Benefit In Kind

[pdean52]

Hi All,

Looking for some confirmation of my understanding of my situation - I'm not tax "savvy" and my calculations to date really are based on Google research!

As part of my annual salary review, and to keep me happy(!), my employer has offered to "top-up" my salary by providing me with a fuel card to the value of £50 p/w i.e., £2,600 per annum. This amount would more than cover my fuel costs in relation to commuting - in fact the residual would effectively be put into my wife's car for private mileage. My annual business mileage is in the region of 15,000 miles thus I believe that although I would have to declare the £2,600 benefit to HMRC there would be no Benefit in Kind arising as under AMAP allowance I could claim £5,750 in expenses to offset (45p per mile for first 10,000 miles plus 25p per mile for each mile thereafter) and thus there's nil additional benefit on which any tax needs to be paid.

Just seems quite odd to me, as if I'm missing something, that there's no additional tax liability arising from the additional benefit I'm receiving.

Many thanks!

[bd6759]

By what method does your employer currently reimburse you for business miles, and will he continue to do so?

[King_Maker]

It seems that your employer has fortuitously happened onto the most tax efficient method of dealing with your business mileage.

Based on your figures (and assuming any non-allowable commuting is not included), you should be able to claim the excess AMAP from HMRC as a tax relief - and no Benefit in Kind arises.

Why has your employer not introduced this method before?