I WENT back to the classroom last week with these boys – pictured left – Jeff Whitcombe and David Rawlings, whom together are BCF Wessex, business car consultants.

Readers of this website will already know David – he’s on our expert panel at our Ask the Experts page. And with good reason. I’ve known David for probably more years than we would both care to remember from when David was in the car tax division at Deloitte. Jeff, too, has ‘previous’ with Anderson Consulting, again on the business car tax consulting side.

Occasionally, both Jeff and David run a business car tax seminar – and this was one. A brush up on how company car tax works, capital allowances for company cars, free fuel, and so on. It was very good, too. I would recommend it to any business car professional, and to any SME director or business owner who handles the firm’s business cars – if nothing else it will sharpen your knowledge on what you know. And add a bit more, too.

It will also help you understand more clearly the influence of taxation features that will impact on your business – perhaps more than your company accountant can.

As David put it: “Accountants are GPs – specialists in general practice”, before spelling out how you can only truly calculate the whole life cost of a business car if you include the tax impact and your company’s tax position.

“The government uses tax for two things,” continued David. “To raise revenue; and to influence behaviour. And company car tax is a prime example of influencing behaviour. No one knew about CO2 until 2002, when the new company car tax rules were introduced. But what HMRC was saying to both fleets and car makers was this: if you want cars in the UK, you must get emissions down.”

A prime example of this influence on the cars brought to market is my Audi A6. This large executive car has low CO2 emissions of just 129g/km CO2: that’s the same level as a Ford Focus 2.0 TDCI 140PS hatchback. Think about it.

Audi has achieved this reduction by various means: lightweight construction, slippery aerodynamics, and stop-start fuel-saving technology are a few.

And here’s the result: my journey to the Milton Keynes hotel where the BCF Wessex conference took place – 61.1mpg.

Alright, that’s just an average for one journey. But if you’re a business owner, like me, and funding the car privately, then at 45p per mile under the AMAP rates that’s an average worth having.

It’s also worth having if you’re a business driver, using the AFR business mileage rates of 15p per mile.

Either way – reducing CO2 and improving fuel economy has only one benefit. And that’s on your pocket. Ask the boys from BCF Wessex.

Previous blog on the editor’s Audi A6 Company cars as good as this: Audi A6.