Novated Leasing your Current / Existing Car

Generally, the vehicle must be roadworthy, registered, and under 12 years old by the end of the lease term, so in most cases, your car can be salary packaged with a Novated Lease.

We'll assess your specific situation and help determine if your car qualifies, and whether a novated lease, or some other structure works best.

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There are a few more caveats to be aware of though:

1. It needs to legally be a 'car' for GST purposes. The ATO defines a car as a motor vehicle that is not a motorcycle (or similar). It also must be designed to carry less than one tonne, and fewer than nine passengers. Therefore if your car happens to be a tractor, or something like earthmoving equipment, it's not going to be eligible.
2. Cars that are over the luxury car tax threshold ($91,387 for EV's, $80,567 for Fuel Cars) will incur additional tax that can dramatically reduce the potential value in novated leasing.

If you change jobs, your lease can be transferred to your new employer, or you can choose to take over the payments yourself. Our team will help you manage the transition so you stay covered.

Not the same as when you had it financed traditionally. It's entirely up to you whether you want to own the car or not - and you don't need to decide until the final months of the lease whether you want to keep it, upgrade, or move on.

While the lease is active, the finance company technically owns the vehicle (which is how you get the tax benefits).

You keep control of the car the whole time (it doesn't leave your posession) and continue to drive it as your own, but it’s leased under a three-way agreement between you, your employer, and the leasing provider.

At the end of the lease, you have options:

1. Pay the residual amount to buy the car outright
2. Refinance the residual and keep the car
3. Upgrade to a new car and start a fresh lease

As with any other type of novated lease, you will have three options when your lease comes to an end:

1. You want to buy out and keep the car, and you want to pay the lump sum residual fee to do so (you'll know what this fee is before you sign to begin the lease). You pay the fee, and have no more lease payments - just regular ownership of the car.
2. You want to buy and keep the car, but don't want to pay the full residual sum all at once, so you refinance the residual under a new novated lease, keeping the tax benefits while paying to own the car.
3. You don't want to keep the car, so you sell it and use sale price to pay the residual fee. From here you can choose to start a novated lease on a new vehicle if you wish.

Clear Lease can have you fully settled, paid out, and financed with a novated lease structure within just a few business days from contact. The main barrier is ensuring that we already work with, or can contact your employer to ensure they are onboard with salary packaging.

We already work in the background with thousands of Australian employers, and can often get it setup at your organisation quickly, when you request a quote with us, we'll check if we can work with your employer.

Novated leasing with us includes maintenance and repairs as part of the price by default, unless you request otherwise.

We'll dive into Manufacturer guidelines for repairs expected at certain intervals depending on the your car, condition, and mileage, and pre-plan for these repairs coming up, as part of the fixed cost you'll pay per pay cycle. It's one of the nice side-benefits of novated leasing with Clear Lease, and helps you to not worry about unexpected costs coming up.

The lease can be structured to pay out the remaining balance, provided the car's market value supports it. We’ll guide you through how to calculate this and avoid pitfalls like negative equity when you put through a quote request.

We’ll help arrange a fair market valuation from professionals - based on age, condition, mileage, and current sales data. Unlike dealership trade-ins or online estimators, our approach ensures the figure is realistic, ATO-compliant, and beneficial to your leasing structure.

Not at all. You remain in possession of the car at all times. Clear Lease makes sure the transition is handled entirely in the background, without downtime.

For many people, yes. If you're salaried, want to put your tax to better use, and we can work with you, then novated leasing will save you money. You get your cars value back, meaning that cash can be used elsewhere or invested - and you benefit from tax savings on repayments and running costs. Plus, budgeting is simpler with one all-inclusive, pre-tax payment.

The main thing to watch out for with novated leasing is that it is not a green light to buy a more expensive car than you need or could afford. But in this case, if you already have the car and have been paying for it, it’s a smarter way to pay.