PBR cuts company car tax for electric fleets

The Chancellor Alistair Darling has announced that electric cars will be exempt from company car tax for five years while electric vans have a 100 per cent write-down allowance for the first year.The measures announced as part of the Chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report this afternoon are designed to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles within company fleets-a key step towards the wider adoption of electric cars.Other measures likely to affect businesses and company fleets include that all employer, employee and self-employed rates of national insurance are set to rise by a further 0.5% from April 2011.The chancellor also confirmed that VAT will return back to 17.5 per cent, but there was no mention of a further increase that some broadsheets rumoured might be planned for 2011.A fuel duty increase is still planned for April, while no mention was made about a possible extension to the Scrappage Scheme, instead a scrappage scheme for boilers will help homeowners update their heating systems and reduce carbon emissions. Changes for VED rates in April are too, still set to go ahead, when a new car first year road tax will be introduced.The Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme (Small Business Scheme) to support up to £1.3bn of banks lending to smaller SME's was due to close in March 2010. This has now been extended for another 6 months.The Chancellor has also extended the temporary increase in the threshold for empty property relief (EPR) for a further year. For 2010/11, the threshold at which an empty property becomes liable for business rates will be £18,000.In order to strengthen the incentives to invest in innovative industries and ensure the UK remains an attractive location for innovation, Government announces it will introduce a Patent Box, applying a reduced rate of Corporation Tax to income from patents from April 2013.The Time to Pay scheme has helped over 160,000 businesses so far spread their tax payments over a timetable they can afford, this scheme will be extended for as ‘long as is needed’ Darling said.Other green measures are discussed on TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk.

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