SE66716 - Tax treatment of National Health Service employees: payments for using own car for work - GWC and HMDS payment schemes - Fixed Profit Car Scheme - using the profit tables

Important note:

Both the statutory rules and the administrative arrangements for dealing with mileage payments are replaced by the new statutory scheme for approved mileage allowance payments (AMAPs) that applies from 2002/03 onwards. Full guidance on the AMAP scheme is at SE31250 onwards.

Rules up to and including 2001/02

The agreed profit tables are circulated in an appendix to a TS memo each year, normally in the March Noticeboard. The profit tables for NHS employees are calculated in the same way as for other fixed profit car schemes following the instructions in EP8000 onwards.

For each employer who pays at the centrally agreed mileage rates, you will need to

• establish whether or not they are using the Fixed Profit Car Scheme to report profits.

You will then need to take the following steps to find the profit table which applies for each individual employee.

• Establish whether the employee is paid at GWC or at HMDS rates
• Establish whether the employee is a standard user or a regular user.
• Find out the engine size band of the car used by the employee for business travel.

Districts may not enter into separate negotiations with NHS employers about how to draw up the Fixed Profit Car Scheme profit tables for payments at GWC and HMDS rates without prior reference to Employment Income Technical.

In Northern Ireland, social work staff within the Health Service come within the arrangements for local authority employees. See SE66705. Where an employee is a regular user for part only of a year of assessment, the assessable profit for that year attributable to regular user status is determined by converting the number of business miles travelled as a regular user to an equivalent annual figure. Then take from the appropriate table the profit corresponding to that annual figure and reduce it in the proportion that the period of regular user status bears to one year.

Where an employee is a standard user for part only of the year no such adjustment is required and the assessable profit attributable to standard user status is the profit in the appropriate table which corresponds to the number of business miles actually travelled as a standard user.

See SE66730 for details of where to find the profit tables for 1996/97 to 1999/2000.