The Pretender - 3/29/2024 08:34

Pickups baffle me. They're becoming quite fashionable here now too, they aren't as big as yours, but still big and seem to attract a certain type of driver....

They mostly now seem geared towards looks rather than utility. they absolutely must be big and imposing, with a big grill to remind other road users how important the driver and their journey is. There needs to be chrome and plastic tat. But we seem to forget that they are supposed to be a utility vehicle that you can throw things in the back of and jump in when you're very dirty. But now, the bed is too high to lift things into and only orangutangs and professional basketball plays stand any hope of reaching over the side to pick anything out of the bed. You can't load them with a forklift either for fear of scratching the embelishements, and the sides don't fold down anyway. I can't imagine attempting to lift a calf or ewe into one, I'd never walk again. Not that anyone would put anything as uncilvilised as a calf or a ewe, particularly a dead one, in the back of a modern pickup. Then getting into the cab would cause issues because who would want to besoil such a special vehicle with clothes befouled with calf sh*t, ewe sputum, oil, mud or grease?

We're getting a rash of these monstrosties here now https://www.ford.co.uk/vans-and-pickups/ranger They are almost all high spec crew cabs, we call the double cabs for some reason. The pinicle of pickup truck ownership is a Ranger Raptor thus https://www.ford.co.uk/vans-and-pickups/ranger-raptor They only seem to sell them to "business men" with facial hair, tattoos, a gym membership and anger managment issues. 

Vehicles have various tax bands, private light goods, which is cars. Commercial, which is pickups and vans and heavy goods which is trucks. Now, there used to be a lot of people that had a company car with their job. The people that needed them, such as sales reps, got use of a car for private use quite cheaply, and people that didn't need them, got a car in lue of money and it worked well for them too. Then HMRC changed the rules and a company car became very expensive almost over night, so people took the cash instead and ran their own car. But you could have a van. Most people that had a company car wouldn't want a van, but there's huge numbers of people that need a work van and being able to take one home for a couple of hundred quid a year in tax was a good thing.

Enter pickups.

Businesses can ofset the running of a commercial vehicle against tax, which is entirely reasonable. That is often a van, and when pickups were pickups, it cold be a pickup too. Then manufacturers starting selling crew cabs, or double cabs as we call them and people started pricking their ears up. They could have a pickup on the company that now had another row of seats, so they could use it as a car, and claim the tax back like if they had a van. There were and still are compromises to be made in that none of them drive as nicely as a car, but the manfacturers put some fancy wheels on them, air conditioning and homo erotic names as special editions and the punters flocked through the show room doors.

We have a thing called Value Added Tax (VAT). It's levied at 20% and was supposed to be on luxury goods, but it's on all sorts of things now, including vehicles. Businesses that are VAT registred can claim the VAT back, private individuals can't. So, if, for example, you bought a £50,000 car, there would be over £8000 of VAT on that you couldn't claim back, but if you were a VAT registered company and bought a fancy crew cab pickup that was 50 grand, you'd only actually pay £41,666. I'm sure you can see where this is going.

So, the shrude businessman would instead of buying a nice 3 series BMW, would spend the same money on a crew cab pickup eg Ford Ranger Compenstator/Penetrator/Wife Beater, claim the VAT back, then put the expense of running through the firm as it was registered and taxed (private vehicles are taxed on emissions, commercials aren't and it's often cheaper to run a van) as a commercial, claiming it as a business expense and offsetting the cost against tax, all while only ever using it as a car, not a work vehicle.

'Thing is, HMRC (our IRS) aren't stupid, they know this is going on and a few weeks ago, said they were changing the rules and would treat crew cabs pickups as cars. Oh dear lord was there ever a hoo haar! Lots of pickup owners started crying about it and a lot of which were farmers, saying how unfair it would be to make they buy a car like everyone else has to or pay the tax on a crew cab, the poor little mites. I pointed out on another channel the sheer level of piss taking that was going on with crew cab pickups, but they were all insistant that the only people buying crew cabs were hard working farmers and builders who wouldn't dream of playing the system and that all pickups were full of tools, dead sheep, diesel cans and permanantly hitched to tri axle Ifor Williams trailers. Try as I might they wouldn't listen whan I told them that certainly around here there are loads of late model, high spec, crew cabs being used as cars, which is obvious, because they are always clean, there's never anything in the back of them, I rarely see on towing anything and most don't even have tow hitches. This little part of the UK is known for being ostentatious, so you need a car that says something about you for your perma tanned wife to show off to her friends in and look impressive outside their gated, mock Tudor mansion, and a crew cab pickup fits the bills if a Range Rover/Cayenne/G Class/Bentayga is to common for her. Without exageration, when I go for a run with my club, I can easily see 10 or 15 spotless pickups and I'd suspect most of them have been put through a business as commercial vehicles to be used as a car. If the playing field was level interms of taxation, drive what you like, and if you like the driving experience of a pickup, and my experience with pickups, is that driving one is quite an experience, knock yourself out and buy one.

Annnnyway, HMRC relented and said they won't change the rules, but I think they said they would be looking into it further, so gym owners and other "businessment" have breathed a sigh of relief. For now anyway, I'm almost certain this isn't the last we've heard from HMRC on this. But it will give these people time to find another tax dodge.