Best strategy for business spending £40k/month or so

[ThriceForgiven]

Hi all,

Didn’t quite know where to post this, but I’m putting roughly £40k/month through an Amex Plat Business, triggering the “£10k spend 10k points bonus” on a monthly basis.

For simplicity I’ve kept it at that, but is there a better strategy to optimise points accruals? Or different business cards beyond Amex which would be profitable? The US market is such a different beast, with so much on offer, but here it just really feels like Amex is the only game for businesses.

[FazzyBear]

Capital on Tap I believe offers 1.5 Avios per £ spent on the paid plan and as it is a Visa card it can be used at more places.

I put a similar amount to yourself on the Business Platinum card and have the same strategy, as Capital on Tap rejected our application for whatever reason. It was definitely not due to bad history, as we have checked, and it is flawless. Nonetheless, haven’t tried again.

As a result, my non Amex spend goes on to my PayPal Business Debit card, which gives 0.5% cashback.

[BLT]

Capital on tap is 1 avios per £ spent and the plan is £99 per year, so no benefit over the Amex platinum business card.

[sayling]

@BLT Other than you can tuck CoT behind Curve Metal and get some fee free HMRC payments (albeit there is a fee for Metal, albeit that can be offset as a business expense, as can the £99 pa CoT fee)

[zapato1060]

slightly OT but I am starting a business purely from home. Im I correct in that I can run council tax, electric, Internet, gas as a business expense? As the Director can I go as far as food for the home to feed Director, household items for the necessities of the Director?

[sayling]

I believe you can pro-rate such things ie 40 hours per 168 hours a week and not 100%, such as utility bills, but you’re stuffed when it comes to food.

Or, rather, you can get stuffed, but only at your own personal expense 😉

[JDB]

zapato1060 wrote:

slightly OT but I am starting a business purely from home. Im I correct in that I can run council tax, electric, Internet, gas as a business expense? As the Director can I go as far as food for the home to feed Director, household items for the necessities of the Director?

@zapato1060 – this is something you need to take proper advice on. If you start to claim that your home is partly for business use (ie expensing council tax etc) you risk running into complications re your personal tax and potentially the PPR exemption if you own the property and you certainly can’t charge say all your gas consumption.

In terms of what you can expense, you need to distinguish between expenses that are legitimate for the business accounts and those that are tax deductible. The ‘wholly and exclusively’ test needs to be considered for any of this.