poor-trader

NextGear are probably more flexible in that you can use it as much or as little as you want.

Correct. But it would be exactly the same on a margin car if you didn't reclaim the VAT. Total purchase price is £12,000. Sale price £15500. Gross profit £3500. £3500 x .1667 margin VAT rate = £583.33 VAT owed. Basically if you are VAT registered you will be paying 16.67% of your gross profit to HMRC on any vehicle. Doesn't matter on the scheme used.

I guess the question is whether these count as "VAT qualifying" cars. There is actually no difference normally on the VAT you end up paying on a margin car or VAT Qualifying. The nett amount is always the same percentage of your profit. Presumably you reclaim the VAT on your purchase and then charge VAT on your sale? You will then be paying the difference between the two to HMRC which will be the same as a margin car. To put it another way: On a car bought for £5000 and sold for £6000: VAT Qualifying: Car cost £4166.67 + VAT = £5,000. Reclaim £833.33. Sell for £6,000 (£5,000 + £1000 VAT). Total amount payable to HMRC is £1000-£833.33=£166.67 Margin Car: Buy for £5000. Sell for £6000. Profit = £1000. VAT Margin rate is 16.67%. 16.67% of £1000 profit = £166.67 to be paid to HMRC.

mdecoder.com for BMW (free). Also outvin.com from the same people for VAG but you have to pay (about €2 a pop). carinfo.kiev.ua used to do Mercedes - not sure if still does (free). Also does Renault Register for Ford ETIS and that'll get you Fords. Regsiter for servicebox and the Citroen equivalent will get you PSA.

I'm happy to buy the properly assured stuff online within reason and did so before Lockdown but the older, higher mileage stuff with no report or the dreadful "essentials" from Aston Barclay or BCA you have to be incredibly careful on. It is the lack of consistency which annoys me - random cars will have full checks and others none. I find the proper Manheim Silver/Gold check pretty good but the others are very iffy.

Story in local paper today that some people were fined for travelling from Birmingham to Essex to collect a new car. Non-essential travel fixed penalty.

On this basis someone can give Primark a £1 deposit and have a quick look around?

On most policies I have had it has been the opposite - i.e. a car owned by the business (whether registered in their name or not) is always covered but once a car becomes privately owned by a director or employee I should contact the insurer and ask for cover to be extended to a private car which they may, or may not, do. That's with AXA.

The only time losing on a car you benefit from VAT is if it is a VAT qualifying car. Then, if you make a loss, the VAT man loses as well.

On non-qualifying used cars you pay margin VAT. If you buy a car for £3k and sell it for £4k you will pay 16.67% of the margin in VAT. So, for that car, the VAT man will relieve you of £167 of your profit. You will be able to claim VAT back on any prep work costs incurred on the car.

I find the eastern Europeans in general good to deal with. They tend to show up when they say they will, know what to look for, know used cars will never be perfect and recognise a decent car at a decent price when they see it.

Every day is a school day!

Yep, just needs to be valid at time you tax it. Be careful that you're 100% sure it is roadworthy if selling it as such. Apart from making it easier to sell a new MOT covers a lot of potential liabilities.

I'm pretty sure you have to pay in advance of booking your collection slot. Generally they are not allowing anyone into the buildings at all.

I actually got two very good buys out of Colchester last week (one so cheap I am still wondering what I have missed but can't fault it) so can happen. Manheim are struggling for quality vendors though compared to BCA and have for some time. Likewise I am reluctant to bid on anything not Surechecked these days.

You have to remember that the condition reports only state what can be seen from a certain distance away - 1m, 2m or whatever. The problem is we all thought the "m" stood for meters but as it turns out as far as the auction houses are concerned it stands for miles.

Sadly the only way BCA and Manheim will stop offering cars online with zero assurance and (in some case at BCA) no proper condition report either is if people stop bidding on them. The day they notice inspected cars selling and non-inspected cars not selling will be the day they do something about it.

Check planning permission. A lot of units only have B1/B8 permission or for Industrial use and car sales usually requires a "su generis" planning permission.

Will be interesting to see how the auctions enforce any/many rules if they allow anyone in bearing in mind most of them still haven't managed to prevent people smoking.

It is a fair comment but you could extend that to the landlord didn't put a gun to the head of a tenant who signed up for an expensive site, the bank didn't when signing for an overdraft, the employees didn't when you have them a job, the Council didn't when you committed to £5k rates a month etc. Like anything else it is a fixed overhead and it's fine when money is coming in. However, when £0 is coming in and it is not possible to liquidate assets, a due rent payment, due salaries or a big bunch of bank charges, a stocking loan payoff is just another thing to pay which runs down the liquidity.

Depends on the RV of the premises. Under £15000 you get £10k, over (but below £51,000 in many cases) you get £25,000

I've only dealt with NextGear and nothing like that amount of money. However, they've been brilliant thus far. No margin payments, cars automatically extended for 60 days when they become due, no audit fees, just the interest which they even offered to defer (I didn't). No idea on BCA but I've heard less positive things about them. My rep's view is that if they put everyone out of business then they'll have zero customer base afterwards so it is self defeating. Furthermore they'll have loads of cars to dispose of they don't want. To be honest I'm small fry and probably not their top priority and if I really had to could probably clear it but nonetheless they've been much better than I expected.

A quick scan through buy-it-nows at Manheim Colchester reveals them all to be the cars which they couldn't get a bid on the week before lockdown in March. In fact of the cheaper cars I spotted at least 3 which failed to make it even through the 'ring on the last Thursday night (the very last auction they had). All yours for a bargain few hundred quid above March CAP Clean if you're tempted.... Take some jump leads and some K-Seal when you collect.

Some cars have suddenly popped up on Manheim's site with buy-it-now and they seem to be scheduling auctions into the calendar again so something happening there despite them being "closed". As far as I can work out all the cars with buy-it-nows are left overs from the last few physical auctions which couldn't get bids or in a couple of cases I know couldn't even make it through the ring.

Reference the comment on CAP and Glasses. It is a bit of a two-way thing, there is no doubt a drop in the guides makes buyers more cautious over what they pay but, yes, ultimately the market will decide. The bigger issue though is that banks, finance companies, stocking loans etc. use these guides to value stock held by a dealer. If 10-15% gets taken off the values then they depreciate that sock value by the same amount and businesses who had a positive balance sheet on Friday have a negative one on Monday. That makes banks nervous about overdrafts, makes it more difficult to borrow and makes stocking companies very worried. If you're a bank sitting on a stock loan book of £1bn, or a leasing company expecting 30,000 end of lease cars back in the next 6 months seeing 15% taken off the value of it all overnight in terms of book price is not good news. Of course what ultimately matters is what they actually realise in terms of cash but short term it makes the financials look suspect.