Thought about a pick-up as your company vehicle? No, the idea isn’t as silly as it sounds, as on top of the extra practicality, the latest models are also more car-like to drive and usually as well-equipped.

However, the biggest benefit for company car drivers comes in the form of reduced BIK rates – covering the personal use of your company vehicle outside of work.

HMRC says a double cab pick-up that has a payload of 1 tonne (1,000kg) or more is accepted as a van for benefits purposes. Payload means gross vehicle weight (or design weight) less unoccupied kerb weight (care is needed when looking at manufacturers’ brochures as they sometimes define payload differently).

To take advantage, you must make sure any pick-up you’re looking at has a payload of at least one tonne even with a hardtop, for which the taxman allows 45kg deduction – if this net total doesn’t exceed 1000kg it will be taxed as a company car! Click here for more details on double cab tax.

Despite the continued popularity of diesel cars, did you know that they have a 3% surcharge over petrol models? Again this is down to emissions, because diesel-powered vehicles throw higher amounts of harmful particulates out of the exhaust, than the same petrol-powered models.

Considering this, make sure you work out if you’d do enough mileage to justify the extra cost of diesel power.

We know there’s a lot to take in when considering a new company car, but we think you should focus on the positive benefits. After all there isn’t another way you can get to pick and drive the newest models every three or four years and that are fitted with all the latest safety and tech kit.

Plus, when you take into account that you’ll no longer have to worry about insurance, servicing or maintenance and their associated costs – it looks far better value!

More importantly, all you have to pay is your benefit in kind company car tax – which is usually a fraction of the car’s final cost.

What about if you compare the monthly lease price of a Personal Contract Hire (PCH) with how much company car tax you’d pay on the same? Well, let’s compare some of our SME Company Car winners for 2016?

How about our Best Compact SME Company Car – the MINI Cooper D five-door?

The MINI would cost £189 per month (pm) on PCH*

• That same MINI would cost £83pm in company car tax

Or the Best Green SME Company Car – the Audi A3 Sportback e-tron?

The green Audi would cost £46pm on PCH*

• That same Audi would cost £83pm in company car tax

Or, finally how about our SME Company Car of the Year, the Jaguar XE 2.0d R-Sport 163PS?

The Jaguar would cost £259 on PCH*

• The same Jaguar would cost £16pm in company car tax

*With the PCH you have to pay for all running costs including insurance. With a company car all you pay is the company car tax and any private fuel.

So company cars are worth it and we’d advise definitely taking a look!