Can a classic be used for business use?

Can a classic be used for business use?

Hi, Just reaching out to see if you can help. I am wondering if it makes any sense to own and run a classic car for business use in Ireland (not a car business). Mainly, do Revenue have a way to allow businesses to do this in terms of annual vehicle depreciation allowances to income tax. “Standard/normal” car depreciation allowances are based on CO2 emissions for “standard/normal” cars and vans etc.; the more emissions the less you are allowed to “write off” against income tax. But classics don’t have original CO2 emission figures. Pre-2008 cars don't either, so their road tax and allowances are based on engine size; the bigger the engine the less allowance you can claim agaist income tax payable. Is it the same for cars over 30 years old? If you know, or know someone who knows, I would like to know too! Many thanks, Eugene Raeside Bray.

Our answer:

Hi Eugene,

We had a chat with a contact at Revenue and, I’m afraid, the news does not look good. According to them, the system is now set up to deal only with cars on the basis of their CO2 emissions. Up to certain CO2 limits, you can write off as much as €24,000 of the capital cost, but once the CO2 goes above 190g/km, you get nothing back at all. Obviously, for many classic cars it’s going to be impossible to find their original CO2 figures, because in many cases such figures were not recorded by the manufacturer. In the case where an original factory CO2 figure can’t be found, as far as I’m aware, Revenue works on the assumption that it falls into the maximum bracket, and charges accordingly.

Another issue, of course, is that this is all about depreciation, and not many classic cars currently suffer any depreciation, so even if you could get a classic recognised by the system, it would actually probably be going up in value and could potentially be counted as a profit...
Shane O'Donoghue

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