3 Damian is the finance director of Linden Limited, a medium sized, unquoted, UK trading company, with a 31 July
year end. Damian personally owns 10% of the ordinary issued share capital of Linden Limited, for which he paid
￡10,000 in June 1998. He estimates that the current market value of Linden Limited is ￡9 million and that the
company will make taxable profits of ￡1·4 million in the forthcoming year to 31 July 2007.
(a) Damian believes that Linden Limited should conduct its activities in a socially responsible manner and to this
end has proposed that in future all cars purchased by the company should be low emission vehicles. The sales
director has stated that several of his staff, who are the main recipients of company cars, other than the directors,
are extremely unhappy with this proposal, perceiving it as downgrading their value and status.
The cars currently provided to the sales staff have a list price of ￡19,600, on which Linden Limited receives a
bulk purchase discount of 6% from the dealer, and a CO2 emission rate of 168 grams/kilometre. The company
pays for up to ￡400 of accessories, of the salesmen’s own choice to be fitted to the cars and all of the running
costs, including private petrol. The cars are replaced every three years and the ‘old’ cars are sold at auction,
because they are high mileage vehicles.
The low emission cars it is proposed to purchase will have the same list price as the current cars, but the dealer
is only prepared to offer a bulk discount of 5% on these vehicles. Damian does not propose to make any other
changes to Linden Limited’s company car policy or practice.
Required:
(i) Explain the tax consequences of the proposed move to low emission vehicles for both the individual
salesmen and Linden Limited, illustrating your answer by means of relevant calculations of the tax and
national insurance (NIC) savings arising. (9 marks)