By Paul Hollick You don’t often hear an entire industry say “Whaaaat?!” but that is pretty much what happened after the Budget on October 29. Fleets are justifiably angry and frustrated at being kept waiting for clarity on future company car tax (CCT) rates. The Government will say the delay is all for the long term best. WLTP has turned into a worldwide lesson on the law of unintended consequences, so it’s right to rev
By Paul Hollick Despite the Prime Minister's high-profile party conference promise to keep fuel duty frozen in the Budget, higher rates may still be on their way. A highly influential think-tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has just said the government should look at uprating fuel duty in line with inflation every month. The IFS says its idea would allow the government to steadily – others might say stealthily – recoup the £9b
Until the UK government started tinkering with the well-established car BIK regime in 2015, traditional company car benefits had enjoyed several years of stability. The number of car tax payers had settled at just below a million drivers. They could count on predictable tax liability because average CO2 emissions kept on falling, which offset the steady annual tightening in the BIK scales. What could go wrong? Well, not only did the governm
Company cars. Polar bears. Uber in London. RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire. What do they all have in common? Well, for one thing, they all currently have online petitions demanding government action to save them. Fleet World magazine recently posted a company car tax petition to Parliament as part of their ongoing campaign to save the company car. It hopes to attract 10,000 signatures demanding reform of BIK for diesel and ultra-low emission v
”The story that is emerging feels like a plot that was initially looking like a thriller and is now transforming into a ghastly horror film” The Insider, Fleet World magazine. Progress in the switch-over to the new WLTP international vehicle emissions test might well be characterised by Donald Rumsfeld’s famous quote about “known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns”. The “known knowns” include the WLTP CO2 figure for m
The UK Government hasn’t made plans to meet demand for IDPs if UK licences stop being valid for Europe next year As things stand in the Brexit negotiations, UK driving licences will cease to be valid in Europe from 11pm on 29 March next year. Unless the UK government reaches a specific agreement with Brussels before then, drivers with a UK licence will need to obtain an International Driving Permit (IDP) before they can drive legally or h
The UK taxman’s latest report on benefit-in-kind tax does not look good for the future of company cars. Or for government revenues. It reveals that the £2.5 billion the government gets each year from car, van and fuel benefits is now in danger of drying up. The reasons are a mix of short-sighted increases in BIK rates, ‘dieselgate’ and new emissions tests. These are sending company car drivers up a cul-de-sac where they can no longer
You probably won't remember a time when diesel was cheaper than petrol in the UK. It was 1990 when the tables turned. Over the last 15 years, diesel has averaged 4.3 pence per litre more than unleaded petrol. At the peak of the price gap - in 2008, garages charged a whopping 15 pence per litre more for diesel! So why the difference when both diesel and petrol are made from the same feedstock, via the same process, by the same industry?
Petrol and diesel prices finally broke out of their strong rising trend last week, with the government’s official tracker showing a drop of nearly 1p per litre across the UK. But are we seeing the start of a return to cheaper fuel or are prices merely taking a breather on their way to a new high? The short answer is that UK pump prices are set to stay at elevated levels for the foreseeable future. Here’s why: Steady outlook for oil p
As expensive fuel looks set to stay, with some motorway stations now charging over £1.49 per litre, we talk to TMC customer David Cadwallader, UK & Ireland Car Fleet Manager for global workplace products distributor Lyreco, about his successful strategies for keeping a lid on costs. He tells us: “In 2017, our fuel cost per car user was at its lowest, as was the pence per mile, despite pump prices being at their highest for two years.”
One of the many differences between electric vehicles (EVs) and internal combustion engines (ICEs) that fleets will have adjust to is the way their fuels are priced. We’re accustomed to a highly-standardised supply system for petrol and diesel: two types of fuel, in standard and premium grades; pump nozzles that come in just two sizes, and prices that typically only vary by 2-4 pence per litre (away from motorways at least). On the other
