We often have a state of two thoughts when asked if we could use our personal car for business. The straight-up answer is NO! Business usage is actually treated differently depending on the type of business you do.
If you are an entrepreneur, you might definitely use your vehicle to visit anywhere possible, and you would take it to work and the trip. Things get serious if you are just an employee for a large firm and decide to use your car for business. Driving either your business or personal car to work is more complicated than fun or cost-efficient if you intended.
An experienced driver should be fine choosing any of the vehicles to work unless he messes up badly. To those who are a bit unsure of driving to perfection, get yourself a DKT course first. Driving a car is never easy unless you are fully prepared. You can simply start with an online test and work your way through professional driver’s training.
What kind of job can you do with your personal car?
Things are clear; you can use your personal car as much you want if your office promises to cover the car’s insurance premiums. You can go to your office, attend meetings and return home in your own car if you have the right assurance.
Additionally, suppose there occurs a case where an employee who takes the bus to the office and has the responsibility to complete a business deal with clients. In those cases, you are probably going to use your personal car. Deliberately, you would not want to risk your business at odds between business and personal car.
Insurance policies that differentiate between personal car insurance and business car insurance
A car mainly intended to use for business has advantages over tax while the other hand using a personal car for business can get expensive. Subsequently, you can upgrade a car’s policy if you intend to limit your vehicle to the following commercial purposes.
- Use your car for ride-sharing purposes (like Uber and Lyft)
- You are limited to delivering anything that doesn’t include your business work (like delivering food as Uber-eats or delivering machines and merchandise that could make you extra bucks).
- Lend your car as a rent
- Use the business car to tow the truck and use it for other emergencies.
Using a personal vehicle to business is a bad idea; simply look at the points below.
Depreciation costs
Every car depreciates by a considerable percentage as the year passes. Therefore, driving your personal car for business exposes your vehicle to experience dents and a scratch due to its overuse, resulting in heavy depreciation.
If you are fortunate enough to get compensation from the company, you will be limiting your bucks to maintain your car. Most of the time, you need to talk to the manager and negotiate on the topic.
Taxes and subsidies
Business properties are already getting benefits under taxes. What’s left is your vehicle. If you wish to use your vehicle anyway, you must act cleverly to record every detail of your car. Most importantly, it would help if you recorded the distance covered by your car while driving it for business as well the personal use. Be it as it may, you are left with no help from your company without proper evidence.
Accident prevention policies
Life is uncertain; if the uncertainty happens while you are driving to the business work in your personal car, at the time, protection and coverage are what benefits you. If we look into statistics, the potential crash of a vehicle experience is relatively low, but you never know the dicey part of life. Getting an accident prevention policy is a smart move, even though you drive safely.
Car insurance
Car insurance is often claimed at the time you buy them. The insurance might cover partial or full insurance depending upon an individual. At the time you drive your vehicle to work, personal insurance plans do not cover damages done to the vehicle. A company that cares for its staff always offers non-hired insurance; if not, your damage is not covered.
Car expenses you can deduce driving for business
Without elevating things, you can reduce your expenses driving for business if you can prove the trip you set on your car is solely for business purposes. Similarly, the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) suggests two ways to reduce expenses, viz. actual expenses and a decrease in the standard mileage rate.
The IRS is the standard that measures the expenses of a car driving for business. The value changes every year, thus make their own self updated on their figures. Simply calculate the tax figure by multiplying miles you have driven so far by the particulars set by IRS.
IRS doesn’t work as simple as it seems; there are other fundamentals one has to meet to claim a standard mileage grant.
- You must operate cars at most four at the same time for business use.
- It’s good if you did not claim for depreciation deduction expenses tempering the car’s actual use other than business purpose.
- You must not have claimed any of the allowances before.
The decision to drive a personal vehicle or a business vehicle to work is ultimately a personal choice. It all comes down to risk management when anything happens down the road while you use either of them. You are likely to get benefits from using a business vehicle while you experience risk during work hours; otherwise, you will get into trouble.
Which car makes you comfortable? Driving a personal vehicle to work is fine if you can negotiate with your company to provide non-hired insurance. You have the leverage to work extra hours delivering foods, merchandise, and even using your car as a ride-sharing purpose that makes you extra bucks.
Apart from that, if you are a little unsure of covering legal fines driving your personal car, choosing a business car over the personal one should be a smart move. A commercial insurance plan benefits you a lot as it includes human injury, car damage, robbery, and theft.
Subsequently, driving a business car can sometimes make the most of luxury experience as most well-established companies ramble around in Porsche, Genesis, Ford, and BMW. Moreover, they can have features like AC, automatic driving, dash cams, smart summon, and many more.
