AN astonishing 25% of larger companies don’t know how much they pay their staff for driving their own private cars on company business.

The frank confession highlights a worrying lack of cost control – and if they pay too much, creating a taxable benefit for their employees.

The rate businesses can use for repaying business mileage in a private car is up to 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles, dropping to 25p per mile thereafter.

These rates are known as the Approved Mileage Allowance Payments (usually abbreviated to AMAPs).

AMAPs rates are not obligatory – companies can pay below this rate, and employees can recover the difference through their tax return.

The discrepancy in the knowledge base of large corporates was uncovered in research undertaken by business leasing and mobility firm Alphabet in its Alphabet Fleet Management Report (AFMR) 2012.