Thorny wrote:depreciation affects finance arrangements the same way as if you own it outright - there really is no difference, it all just really boils down to where you want to put your money... And yes the balance goes to you less the value of the balloon (or whatever you owe at that time if you settle it early). The cheapest way of doing it (apart from buying outright) is putting it on yuor mortgage.
Now the whole borrowing on a mortgage thing is another kettle of fish - it's normally the cheapest way in terms of your monthly payments, but if you've got a 20 year mortgage, you're effectivley paying 25 years of interest on the extra you borrow from the mortgage, so although it costs less monthly, overall it's a lot more expensive than say a 5 year loan.
The only thing that gets me about finance deals where you put down a sizeable deposit is that if in this instance you put down £28k deposit, after your monthly payments, you've got your baloon of 28k, so if you decide to swap for another car, and your car is now worth say £35k, you've now only got a £7k deposit to put towards the new one and that's gonna keep decreasing.
I appreciate that it's just the depreciation that you'd be taking anyway, but it seems a rough way to do it. BUT, you're point about having the money in your business and therefore being able to invest elsewhere and in that respect then not pay tax on the sum you would otherwise put into the car, that's a real deal changer and probably makes it exceedingly worth while. In very much the same way that most businesses will leverage debt against a business when buying it, even if they have the capital to do so outright, because you can then offset the debt against profits and get around tax.
