Company car for customer visits
May 4, 2011 | 30,00 EUR | answered by Oliver Burchardt
I tax my company car as usual with 1% of the list price and 0.03% per kilometer distance to the office. The distance to the office is 3km.
I usually drive 2 to 3 times a week to a customer who is about 90km away. Since an office of our company is located almost opposite the customer, I use this office for meetings or working.
The question now is: Do I have to tax these 90km as well? Is it a taxable benefit?
The next question is: Do I have to move my office to the location that is 90km away due to the tax office? How would that change the taxation of my company car?
Dear inquirer,
Thank you for your inquiry, which I would like to answer as part of an initial consultation.
The approach of a pecuniary benefit for the use of a company car is only necessary for trips between your home and the regular workplace.
If you use the company car for trips to a customer of your employer, there is no taxable benefit for you. Therefore, trips to your customer are irrelevant for tax purposes.
However, the location of your regular workplace is very relevant for the question of taxation. If your place of work is in an office 90km away, you must apply the 0.03% of the list price to the 90km. In this case, you would have a significantly higher tax burden.
This would be the case if that office is the center of your permanent professional activity. A regular workplace can also be established by regularly visiting an employer's place of business. However, it must be distinguished which activities you perform in the second place of business. For example, if you attend a meeting at the second place of business once a week, while you do visit regularly, I would deny that a regular workplace is established there. The situation is different if you have an office available to you in the second place of business and work there regularly. In this case, there is a second workplace.
Unfortunately, I cannot conclusively answer your second question. It depends very much on the circumstances of your individual case. If you also perform your duties in the more distant office of your employer and do not just perform subordinate tasks (such as attending meetings), you establish a second workplace, which means that you must also accept a usage tax for these trips.
I hope I have been able to assist you in the course of your inquiry.
Best regards,
Oliver Burchardt
Tax advisor
