Child Support / Company Car

Hello,

I desperate need of some advice.

I have one son and i have had a private agreement in place with his mother since birth. There has never been any complaints about the amount in the entirity of my sons life until recently. I have been going through a rough patch with my co parent with regards to access to my son.

My ex has now made a claim with CMS. I recevied a letter which stated a value for my annual earnings that is around 9k more than my salary. At first i presumed it was a bonus i had recevied but when i started to look back on P60 forms and wage slips i confirmed that was not the case.

Chatgpt then bought to my attention that the CMS count company car BIK values against your total earnings. So i am paying my ex more money for a car which i pay tax on and have to pay fuel for. I do not earn any monitary value for this car.

The difference the car is adding is an extra £150 per month to my ex which i cannot afford. I am trying (so far in vein) to come to a middle ground private agreement with her. But i wondered if anyone has advise on this particular situation? Has anyone ever succesfully challenged this with the CMS?

I am seriously worried about my financial future, i cant even give the car back because the value would not make a 25% difference so CMS would not review my case.

Stuck and looking for help...... Please

CMS are correct.
If you didn’t have the car as part of you salary package you would get a higher salary which you would pay tax etc on.
Also if you had to buy your own car it would be with money you had paid tax on.
If you want to reduce your CMS figure best thing to do is choose a car with the lowest Benefit In Kind value you can, probably one of the hybrids or EV. Other thing is increase you pension contributions as much as you can afford preferably via salary sacrifice.

Too add to the above if you pay any extras on top of CMS consider stopping them, a difficult decision but CMS is all you are legally obliged to pay.

Unfortunately your ex is unlikely to want to agree a new amount on a private basis that is any less than CMS.