Tax return help- lease car and how much to claim.

[Pigment84]

Any helpful accountants out there....! I bought a car on lease in sept 2017 and I need to fill out my tax return for 2018 -2019. I think I can claim the full monthly amount from april 2018 to sept 2018 as it will the first year but can I continue to claim after that time for the full amount? And how do I claim for an electric car and mileage?

why would your car be tax deductible ?

I was under the impression that the first year you had it as a new car and a business expense that you could put that against your tax bill.

why is your car a business expense ?

you need to talk to your accountant

I've never claimed for my car on finance - I don't think you can as surely anyone buying a car would just write that off against tax??
I've always claimed the standard 45p per mile (for first 10,000 miles and 25p thereafter)

Firstly, if you starting leading the car in Sept 17, you should have started claiming relevant expenses from that point. Secondly, unless the car is used exclusively for business purposes (which is very unlikely) you can only claim motor expenses relating to the business use element. Thirdly, the expenses you can claim depend upon whether you are using the flat rate scheme or actual expenses.

To be honest, it sounds as though you don't know what you are doing. Pay a chartered accountant to help you, but don't expect them to do it before 31 January as they are busy dealing with their current clients.

Do you even know what type of lease you have? An accountant will need to see the detail in the lease contract before they can advise you.

Presumably your're running your own business - is it a sole trader or limited company.

What was the genuine/allowable business mileage of the leased vehicle compared with total mileage for it. You can only claim the percentage of business use so if you used it half for business and half for personal, you can only claim half the costs anyway.

If you're employed or a limited company, things are VERY different.

Can I be a fly on the wall when you ask an accountant a question like this a week before the tax return deadline when it is something that you could have sought advice on over 2 years ago?

OP
You have has answers from a range of helpful highly qualified accountants.
Have you spoken to your accountant yet ?

Listening I love random FB posts as well which always start asking if there are any local accountants who can give them a couple of minutes free of charge before launching into a complex question about IR35.

Dearover
I have a friend who rather rudely told me he'd do his own return from now on (I'd done it for years)
and is now in a grump because I want money to file his PAYE through my software
as he cannot remember his login stuff and left it till now to file
[snigger]

MTD has a lot to answer for in that respect. Clients are keeping over in horror because Sage & QB have the audacity to want to charge them each month and dare to double their prices after the probation period. I blame the government for trying to pretend that anyone can do tax and nobody needs to train for 3 years and do CPD.

Too right

personally I'm a fan of VT Cashbook - clunky but effective and free and throws data into my Taxcalc very simply

personally I'm a fan of VT Cashbook - clunky but effective and free

Shhhh! It's one of the best kept secrets. We buy the "paid for" version for better functionality but it's still far too cheap for how good it is. It'll be a very sad day when VT gets bought out by Sage or Iris and they ruin it.

they are charging for the MTD Vat users but still tres cheap ;-)

HMRC have a twitter account where you can ask questions & get advice (only just discovered this myself!) for self assessment #HMRC customer support

Thanks for the advice.