When is a Diesel car not a Diesel car?

Answer:

The simple answer is when you are HMRC, however it is a little more nuanced than that.

Diesel Cars and the P11D

When dealing with cars and employee tax, there are several factors about the vehicle which are taken into consideration when calculating the appropriate percentage (such as the price or the CO2 emissions), however one of the key elements is the fuel type.

Although the vehicle V5 may have various entries under the ‘fuel type’ section, as far as HMRC are concerned there are only three: A, D and F. Where this gets a little more confusing is both D and F relate to diesel cars, and the difference can have a dramatic effect on the amount of tax an employee pays (there is a 4% supplemental charge on cars marked as D).

The reason there are two definitions for diesel cars can be tracked back to when the world discovered that diesel cars were more polluting than people thought, and this led to new legislation to ensure manufacturers ‘cleaned up their act’.

This new legislation led to the introduction of RDE2 (Real Driving Emissions step 2), which is related to the Euro 6D standard. It was a two-stage introduction process, where from January 2020 new type approvals for diesel cars needed to comply, and then from January 2021, all new cars needed to conform (new type approval means ‘all new cars’, as opposed to simply an updated model).

For data entry into the P11D Organiser, this means that if the date of registration is AFTER January 2021, it will almost certainly be an RDE2 car – so should be marked as HMRC fuel type F, or it should be set Euro 6D on the V5 drop down. If you are importing data, ensure the field is set to RDE2, Euro 6D or F.

Even if the date of registration is after January 2020 there is a good chance that is an RDE2 car and could be worth checking. 

Euro standard 6D information is available on the form V5C for cars registered after 1 September 2018 - if the Euro status of the car is shown as Euro 6AJ, 6AK, 6AL, 6AM, 6AN, 6AO, 6AP, 6AQ or 6AR, the car meets Euro standard 6D or RDE2 (see GOV.UK website here). You can check cars on the Government Vehicle Enquiry website by simply entering the registration number. There are couple of samples below, the one on the left is a car registered in December 2022 and IS RDE2 compliant, the one on the right is from a car registered in November 2020, and IS NOT RDE2 compliant - so not simple!