Hi
I am buying a new van and wanted to put a portion through my accounts. Anyone know how much you can claim?? Percentages??
Thanks
Depends what percentage you are looking at. If you mean the percentage per year for the capital allowance then they are fixed. It has changed recently. I think it may be as high as 50% for the first year followed by smaller percentages thereafter (check with IR or your accountant)..
However, if you are referring to the proportional use between personal and business, that will vary from one person to another. If you have a car as well, you can offset 100% of van use and maybe a bit for the car as well (you do use it for giving quotations at places where you want to make an impression and don't want to turn up in a work van, don't you?). If you don't have a car, any reasonable percentage would do - though I did take samples of mileage at different times and found a fair figure from that. I use 85% myself. That's a fair figure for me and has never been queried. However, in my first year, I used a lower figure as the work took a while to build up. When I use that 85%, it follows through on all stuff relating to the van i.e. 85% of the permitted capital allowance, 85% of the diesel, repairs and maintenance, 85% of the loan interest etc. Some people prefer to use 40p per mile as their figure. However, I think this is only relating to work miles. If I was using the 40p per mile scheme, I imagine that I would, in fact, be offsetting something like 34p per mile of TOTAL mileage. I don't use the 40p scheme though.
I'm not saying that mine is the right way. I'm just saying that's how I do it.l