AMID the relentless fleet focus on car carbon dioxide emissions, employers and company car drivers are in danger of overlooking the other key component of benefit in kind tax - a car's list price.

The CO2 emissions merely determine the percentage of the list (or P11D) price of a car used to calculate the driver's benefit charge, so the lower the list price, the lower the tax bill.

Given that the cost of any optional extras has to be included in the P11D price, and that any discounts negotiated by the employer are disregarded by the Inland Revenue, it becomes straightforward to see the appeal of well-specified cars with low list prices, especially if they also have competitive emissions.

This is certainly a position that SEAT is keen to promote, according to the firm's head of marketing Mark McKenna.

'Charging a realistic retail price is very important now, along with offering low emission engines,' he said.

As the brand in the Volkswagen Group empire with the sporty characteristics, SEAT sees real opportunities to grow in the user-chooser segments of the market, and has put in place some of the key features to deliver competitive wholelife costs to fleets.

Its approved used car programme, for example, recently won a What Car? Award, and should provide a useful bulwark to protect residual values by increasing used car sales among its dealers. Kevin James, director of SEAT UK, said: 'We see our sales growing to 40,000 units by 2005, and at least 40–50% of our sales will be fleet and business.

'We are trying to develop the way we build our relationship with fleet customers, although we will always involve our dealers in the process.'