Helpful Hints about Vehicle CO2 and Cubic Capacity (cc)

When importing and editing vehicle data within the P11D Organiser, be careful to keep an eye on the CO2 and cc entries – small differences can have a dramatic effect on the benefit an employee may receive.

There is a setting in the P11D Organiser that marks a car as having ‘No Approved CO2’ (see screenshot), this should ONLY be ticked when there is really no CO2 figure – which for a modern car is very unlikely. Even if there is a figure in the CO2 box, this setting takes precedence and a zero value is used.

The effect of having this box ticked can be quite dramatic – in the example above it would take the benefit from 17% of the list price to 28% – or around £8,000 to over £13,000 for the year!

You should also keep a careful eye on the cc figure – although this is no longer used on the standard calculation of car benefit, it DOES come into play if there is no approved CO2 figure or for cars that are registered before the 1st of January 1998.

The P11D Organiser validates all imports and will warn you when a vehicle has a ‘zero’ CO2 figure, however if you have worries about a car benefit calculation, make sure you have checked all the vehicle information – this can be accessed by right clicking on the car allocation for any employee.

You can find more information and guidance at the HMRC website and on the P11D Working Sheet 2 Car and Car fuel benefit