First time 4x4 buyer

Heathen

Hello everyone,

Im a proper greenhorn on this subject of jeeps so i will probably be asking a lot of very obvious questions.. sorry in advance!

Right, i do from time to time a bit of work for family relatives etc which requires some space to transport my tools and such, and i am also a drummer with a pretty big drum kit, i have decided to look into selling my car and changing to something like a LWB Pajero or something, with the rear seats removed and converted to storage space... a few questions...

First off, am i allowed to buy, insure and Tax one of these as a private vehicle or do i have to be a registered tradesman or something to prove i will only use it for commercial use? i want to use it as my daily driver...

When you query the tax rates on motortax.ie i get rates like 310 per year, seems pretty low, is that the commercial tax rate? do you need a certain criteria to qualify for that rate?

can these be insured as a private vehicle or only commercial through a registered business?

Basically i want to know what, if any, hoops i need to jump through to get something like this on the road... http://www.carzone.ie/search/Mitsubishi/Pajero/SPORT-LW/6413359081685660/advert?channel=CARS

Many thanks and sorry if these are stupid questions

H

Eric Cartman

its a commercial vehicle by build type so it will always be insured commercially - anyone can avail of this.

the commercial tax rate is 310 , the private rate is 1293 or 1598 , the difference is with commercial tax you will have to sign a declaration that you will use it for business use only, you may also have to give a VAT / Herd number for this.

In my experience though, you would need a <snip> of a gard to do you for having commercial tax and using it privately , and a PPS number will usually get by the basic checks the tax office will do. Its your descision whether you want the extra 1000+ euro a year to play with.

the other difference is that if taxed commercially it will have to be DOE'd once a year , privately it would have to be NCT'd . The DOE isnt as strict on most things but lights, brakes and tyre loading rates are important.

101sean

There's been many posts on this but unless you have a VAT number, herd number, registered company or a couple of other criteria you will probably be caught for private tax which will be well over €1000 on a Pajero. You're also not supposed to use a commercially registered vehicle for private use but everyone does.

Insurance wise it doesn't make any difference how it's taxed but a commercial policy covers SD&P anyway.

Do you really need a big 4x4 and it's 30mpg at best? Would you be better off with mid size van with 1.9ish size engine?

Heathen

Thanks for the info lads, I don't really need a big 4x4 to be honest, i am just sizing up my options at this point.. I was also looking at things like transit connect/ seat inca/ opel combo type vans... does the whole commercial thing apply with these too? take the combo for example, she is a 1.7 diesel.. is it gonna cost me a over a grand to tax her privately or whats the story there?

H

101sean

Depends on year but it will be a lot less than €1000 privately, check the Revenue website.