ARVAL India wants lower taxes on car leases
Today we’re catching up with Mike Curtis, CEO at ARVAL India. We’re asking Mike what ARVAL has been up to since we last spoke about the changes in the tax regime in India.
“There are three key activities underway – Promotion of new car leases to corporates as a tax efficient employee benefit, launching My Arval – the web and app based tool for users and fleet managers, and continuing to lobby the government to reduce the level of indirect taxes on car leases incepted before GST was introduced in July 2017.”
Benefits of Leasing
Mike explains: “Leasing is still a great way to motivate employees through employee car schemes and we see increasing interest from corporates from the compensation and benefits perspective in offering tax efficient car schemes for employees where lease rentals are deducted before tax through the payroll and the employee has the opportunity to buy the car at the end of the lease period at an advantageous price. In the last year we have many new clients who see this as an efficient and motivational benefit for employees and efficiently utilise the tax breaks available to individuals.”
My Arval
“We will soon launch our My Arval application in India. It is a web based application which allows access to users and fleet managers. This application is already live in many European countries and is currently in final testing for launch in India in May this year.
In phase 1, we will be launching My Arval Fleet Manager targeted at fleet managers and coordinators. It is a daily refreshed and responsive tool developed for our clients, delivering 24/7 online information, assisting the fleet managers in managing their cars’ fleet and controlling the fleet TCO*.The fleet managers can also access the dashboards to view their active fleet, deliveries and returns, plan returns, view cumulated spends with monthly rentals, access and print historical invoices and view their fleet contractual duration and mileage.
In phase 2, we will be launching My Arval Driver targeted at users. It will enable the users to manage their day to day activities, view service networks, manager service booking requests and view all the information regarding their active contract.”
Lobby
"The third key activity for Arval and for the leasing industry and its customers across India is lobbying the Government of India to reduce the unacceptable impact of the increase in tax rate from VAT to GST for the cars whose leases started before 1 July 2017. This is work in progress and we remain optimistic that the government will review our request positively later this year."
