Commercials with seats and windows ...how?

peasant

Have come across a good few large 4x4's on carzone, that were clearly passenger cars, even seven seaters, but were still advertised as commercially taxed (there wa a Volvo estate and a Merc estate at some stage as well ...)

How is this possible?

Some of them were Japanese imports, only newly registered here. Some of them also had very dark rear windows, but still all seats in them.

Was there a brown envelope involved in the registration?

And if one were to buy one of these ...is there a possible scenario of a guard or revenue officer at a checkpoint at the side of the road decicing that there is no way that this is a commercial ... and hitting you with a fine and back tax for umteen years or something of that ilk ...like a prosecution for tax evation even ? (Plus VRT on the import of course ...)

bspoke

Yes ,yes and yes. The jap ones anyway will have been registered the same way as Gtr Skylines yet they have 2.0 on the log book. The dealer has obviously done it to save himself a chunk of VRT and to make a bigger profit.
Most Japanese cars come with the rear windows tinted and a busy VRT guy may have just have a quick look out of an office window and figured they were commercials.

I am yet to here of anyone being done for their car being wrongly registered but I am sure it has happened.

maidhc

A skyline as a commerical?!!?

Gandhi

My Dad had a Renault 18 estate (this was in the eighties) that was officially a commercial vehicle because of the amount of storage space in it. More than a certain amount of cubic inches and the vehicle was officially commercial.

peasant

Here are a few current examples:

http://www.carzone.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carid=376399

http://www.carzone.ie/usedcars/index.cfm?fuseaction=car&carid=379201

fdisk

Had one of these once myself (but a landrover, not an import). There was a time that you could tell the tax office that you were mainly using it for commercial purposes carry goods, and they would chage it to a commerical tax (but not on first registration, so the excise duty etc would have been paid on it being a private vehicle). Won't work any more though, and if you buy one of these and try and tax it you will find out that they have a policy in place the last few years now to carry out an inspection and confirm that the vehicle has been properly converted to a commercial vehicle, and this is done every time the vehicle is registered to a new owner.

richardson2525

you can tax any car commercially if it is to be used for commercial purposes and not used for private matters, you have to go the gardai and sign a declaration to this effect and you can then pay €258 a year road tax or whatever it is on your Hummer or Ford Fiesta. You will have to do a annual DOE test instead of the bi-annual NCT though

Litcagral

richardson2525 wrote:

the bi-annual NCT though

richardson2525 - "bi-annual" = twice a year. I presume you mean biennial.

Mickk

Yea any car can be taxed commercially but what can often happen is that the seats are taken out just for the vrt inspection, vrt is then only 50 euro and then the seats put back in. It will say on the documents whether it has been imported as a car derived van.

Be careful if it is a car derived and it has back seats, any of them customs checkpoints (usually on the southside in summer on a sat/sun) will take the car off you there and then, fine you and charge you the vrt! They are there to get yellow reg's but could cop it...

Savman

You can't tax a Saloon commercially (trust me I tried;)) but you can tax Jeeps, Hatchbacks and Estate cars provided you sign declaration and get it stamped by gardai etc etc.

Our man in Havana

It's a massive scam, which I am surprised the revenue haven't copped on to.

peasant

Bond-007 wrote:

It's a massive scam, which I am surprised the revenue haven't copped on to.

EVERYBODY !

please *wave* at the friendly VRT inspector who just stumbled over this thread ...

Yes, my friend ...you've got that pay-rise in the bag !