Van-quished

THE STORY IS that someone in government during the course of his (or her) driving holiday in France pulled into a supermarket car park only to notice that he was surrounded by a large number of vans with English number plates no doubt all being filled up with cheap fags and booze — purely for personal consumption of course! Possibly the vans were all signwritten with the firm's name and this resulted in the thought that a maximum benefit in kind tax charge of £200 (i.e. a £500 benefit for a van under four years old multiplied by a top tax rate of 40%) might not be reflecting the true value of the personal use being obtained from these assets. Perhaps the writing was on the wall with the rising popularity of 'double cab pick-ups' (is it a van is it a car?)...