Category: Grant

A Summary of Tax, Savings and Benefits of Electric Cars

What is the plug-in grant?

The plug-in grant has been around for several years as an incentive to purchase electric vehicles to curb climate change. The grant has been modified many times, but it currently offers £2,500 off of eligible low-emission cars and up to £16,000 for larger vehicles.

You do not need to apply for the grant. The car dealer will include the grant in the vehicle’s price if it is eligible.

  • Cars: CO2 emissions of less than 50g/km and can travel at least 112km with zero emissions. The car must cost less than £35,000 and be on the list of government approved vehicles. The grant will pay for 35% of the car price up to £2,500.

Grants for vehicle charging points

In addition to the plug-in grant, you can also receive up to £350 towards the cost of a vehicle charging point. The Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme (EVHS) provides up to 75% of the installation cost on domestic properties in the UK.

There is also the Workplace Charging Scheme (WCS) which is a voucher based scheme that provides support to businesses who install vehicle charging points.

Both grants need to be applied for from the government’s website.

HMRC Advisory Fuel Rate

The advisory electricity rate for fully electric cars is 4p per mile.

So you can claim 4p per mile for business miles in an electric car.

Advisory fuel rates – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

100% Capital Allowances

Businesses of all sizes can claim 100% FYAs on capital expenditure on a car (CA23153) provided that:

  • the car is ‘unused and not second hand’, and is first registered on or after 17 April 2002;
  • it is an electric car or a car with qualifying CO2 emissions of not more than a specified amount;
  • the expenditure is incurred between 17 April 2002 and 31 March 2025; and
  • the expenditure is not excluded by the general FYA exclusions, see CA23110.

Second Hand zero emission cars are added to the main rate pool and written down at 18%

Benefit in Kind

Cars first registered from 6 April 2020 (WLTP)

CO2 emissions figureElectric range figure2020–212021-22
0N/A0%1%
1–50130 or more0%1%
1–5070–1293%4%
1–5040–696%7%
1–5030–3910%11%
1–50Less than 3012%13%

steve@bicknells.net

New Government Funding to help Women in Business

Gardener

Last weeks ONS figures show more people are becoming self employed than ever before.

Budding female entrepreneurs are set to benefit from superfast broadband with a new £1m challenge fund, enabling them to work effectively, access new markets and grow their business online.

The fund will be part of the Government’s Superfast Broadband rollout and will help women take full advantage of all the opportunities superfast broadband can bring to business. There are 40 local broadband projects in England, already delivering the programme and they will be invited to submit bids to the £1m challenge fund in May 2014.

This forms part of help the Government is already providing to female entrepreneurs, which includes:

  • £1.6 million to support women’s enterprise in rural areas;
  • access to over 15,000 free business mentors; and
  • from next year, the introduction of Tax Free Childcare will mean that, for the first time, many self-employed parents will have access to support with childcare costs.

Are we doing enough to help women in business?

steve@bicknells.net

Do you know a business that could claim growth vouchers?

Gardener

The Government have been keen to promote Growth Vouchers but I think its almost impossible to qualify, see what you think…

This government programme helps small businesses get expert advice on:

  • finance and cash flow
  • recruiting and developing staff
  • improving leadership and management skills
  • marketing, attracting and keeping customers
  • making the most of digital technology

Some businesses will be randomly chosen to get a voucher for up to £2,000 to help finance specialist business support. You’ll have to match the amount with your own funds.

Eligibility

Your business must:

  • have 49 employees or less (including any employees of companies that own a stake in your business)
  • be registered in England
  • have been trading for at least one year
  • not have paid for business advice in the last 3 years
  • be independent (ie no more than 25% is owned by other businesses or organisations)

So you even if you are eligible and you haven’t paid for any business advice you then have to be randomly chosen, that doesn’t make it easy to claim? or am I missing something? and its match funding

steve@bicknells.net

Grow Online, Expand Worldwide – initiative to help SME’s

e commerce

The government wants to make the UK the best place to start and grow a business. In the autumn it will launch a public campaign to celebrate GREAT British business success stories. The government wants to inspire other small businesses and point them towards the support that can help them grow. It will also launch a new strategy for how the whole of government will back them. This will set out a range of measures to continue helping budding entrepreneurs and existing businesses succeed.

If you are a business interested in the ‘Grow Online, Expand Worldwide’ campaign, please call 02070344848 and speak to a member of the Click:Connect:Sell team.

Just 33% of small to medium-sized companies have a digital presence and only 14% sell their products online. But research suggests that if UK SMEs fully adopted online technologies, they could increase annual turnover by £18.8 billion. Here in the UK we’re twice as likely as the OECD average to buy goods online.

UKTI’s ‘Grow Online, Expand Worldwide’ campaign includes local support for:

  • 4,000 aspiring web exporters through awareness raising sessions, a webinar campaign and international web workshops.
  • 1,200 web export ready businesses through e-commerce masterclasses.
  • 1,500 web exporters with bespoke one-to-one advice from experts, tailored website reviews and action planning to access web exporter vouchers – up to £3,000 matched funding.
  • 600 companies from the UK retail sector to sell online by helping them to list their products on the world’s leading online sales sites including Alibaba in China and Tejuri in the Gulf.

steve@bicknells.net