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Comment by polyphemus_rm | Hacker News Reader

That's interesting!

Do happen to have a link for how the "brand new EV on a lease recently for close to free after all the tax advantages" works in the UK?

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As sibling comment posted, if you run a company you can write off the cost of the lease against corporation tax (25% tax saving), VAT (a further 10% saving if you have personal use, otherwise the full 20% if it's purely business), and you don't have to pay income tax on the money (albeit with a small benefit in kind payment).

If you're in the higher tax brackets this means a £200/month lease (say) ends up more like £90/month.

And because of the "new" £3kish subsidy the govt put in, the car finance companies seem to basically apply that as a big discount to the lease value (or it seems that way?). So you could get a brand new ~£30k EV with no upfront payment and a 2-3 year term for <£100/month including maintenance. Mine even came with a free car charger install at home.

This only works for business leases. The employee sacrifices part of their salary in return for being provided a lease car, and both the employee and employer save tax on that money (up to 45% employee, ~15% employer).

For an ICE car the government claws this money back through hefty "Benefit In Kind" taxes placed on employer-provided vehicles, but as an incentive to drive adoption the rates on EVs are only 3% of the car's nominal purchase price (and you only actually pay up to 45% of that 3%).

It doesn't work out "free," but it's typically as cheap to lease a new EV through this scheme as it is to pay the depreciation on a used ICE.

Not sure what schemes are that good (would be interested to see). My company has one, but I ended up buying a used ICE because it worked out to cost about the same as leasing the equivalent EV model of that car. But that might have been the case for the specific car I was looking at (small Volvo SUV).

check out https://www.leaseloco.com/ (there's other sites - I am assuming you are in the UK), they have a lot of deals on. If you want a really good deal then I don't think you want to look for a specific car, you want instead to see what deals are going on and choose between them. It _seems_ that from time to time the manufacturers do a bit of a firesale via leases.

Yeah, my company has similar scheme and it's terrible, both EVs and ICE.

Unfortunately, if your employer uses a "scheme" then the middleman creams off the 15% that the employer would save, then jacks up prices well beyond the market because they have a captive audience.

If the employer leases the car themselves and provides it to you as a benefit, it can be good value -- but then someone has to own the risk of you changing jobs.

I tried getting "close to free" EV on the electric car scheme and considering take home pay cut, all in all, I'm better off buying WITHOUT the scheme, on pcp.

The reasons are:

- the provider is absolutely bonkers, and employing idiots, offering as "in stock" car models twice since updated or discontinued

- the provider is offering the cars at the very steep price, entirely eating the tax advantage

- on top of that id have to pay BIK tax

- and lastly I'd have no choice of choosing the insurance provider, which results in any damage covered by me not covered, and the company itself having absolutely atrocious reviews (ex customers claiming they've been "fined" for the normal wear and tear (eg tiny windscreen chips))

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