Today, so much work is conducted on the information superhighway, that it is easy to forget that we still need to spend a certain amount of our time on the real one, too.
For a manufacturing business or a retail concern, you will probably have at least one or two vans that you lease, but for other businesses, the thought of vehicles is one that is often shelved, and you will either drive around in your private car without a second thought, or perhaps purchase one through the business.
Both of these courses of action can be big mistakes, and even if you are not spending huge amounts of time on the road, you will almost certainly find you can save money and bring other business benefits through a car lease.
Tax incentives
The number one benefit of contract hire is that your business can avoid 100 percent of the VAT if the vehicle is used exclusively for business purposes, and 50 percent if it is used for a mixture of business and personal reasons.
Corporate image
Sometimes a small business has to act big in order to get noticed. We’ve all been there, using the “we” pronoun when we mean “I” and pretending to be our own employee to avoid clients asking themselves why the CEO is visiting them for a sales meeting. It’s all part of the game, and you might call it shallow, but the clothes we wear and the car we drive do make a difference to how clients perceive us.
The special deals on offer from lease firms like Vantage Leasing mean you could find yourself behind the wheel of something very special that would have been way outside your budget if you were buying. So treat yourself – it is all for the good of the business, after all!
Known costs
Buy a car and you are the proud owner of a money pit. OK, while it is new, it is still under warranty, but there are still servicing costs and consumables like tyres that will need to be dealt with, and usually at the most inopportune moment. Then you go to trade it in after a few years, and it is worth half what you were expecting.
With a lease deal, you are clear on exactly what you are spending and when, for the whole duration of the lease. And if you take an “all inclusive” option that encompasses servicing and so on, you know there will be no extra costs that you were not expecting.
No hassle
Never underestimate the cost of hassle in business. Do you really want to spend half a day ringing around for car insurance, another half a day sorting out the ads for the car when you go to sell it and another half a day trying to get your head around vehicle depreciation to see if you can claim it as a business expense? A lease deal makes an irrelevance of all these issues, leaving you free to get on with doing what you do best – making a success of your business.
