§ Miss McIntoshTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to his answer of 26 June 2001,Official Report, column 59W, on company cars, what assessment he has made of the impact of the loss to employees of company car tax concessions. [2084]
§ Mr. BoatengThe new company car tax system from April 2002 is designed to achieve lower levels of harmful emissions from cars. It does away with the reductions for driving higher levels of business mileage as this can be an incentive to drive unnecessary business miles. The reforms have been projected to have a broadly neutral effect on tax revenues, so in overall terms there is no loss to employees.
Many company car drivers will be paying less tax for the benefit of their company car under the new system. Having a company car with relatively low carbon dioxide emissions would help to ameliorate tax liabilities under the new system for any driver.
It is worth noting that we expect more drivers to take the opportunity of having a company car under the new rules. In fact the Inland Revenue has estimated that the reforms will lead to a net increase of around 200,000 company cars in the long term.