How to check if vehicle had VRT paid?

CiniO

I was thinking of buying a vehicle for export and avail of VRT export refund.

Does anyone have any experience in relation to finding out if vehicle had the actual VRT paid in the first place.
Because as far as I know VRT refund is only applicable, if vehicle had VRT paid. Makes sense of course, but how can a person find out - especially before purchasing such vehicle?

What are possible scenarios where vehicle did not have VRT paid?
Surely private import with change of residency would be the most popular.
But what else? Disabled person's car? How does that work?
What else?

colm_mcm

No way of finding out unless you can get the receipt of vrt payment from the supplying garage.

You also have to watch out for deferred (where the tax isn't paid in full upon registration) VRT, say on a hire car as well, which affects VRT rebate.
Rebate is deducted by the original value of the deferred amount (or something)

Yep, disabled driver/passenger car (which could be claimed after the car is regged and VRT paid)
Some hire cars
Some rentals
Transfer of residence
State car (AFAIK)
Diplomat?

CiniO

Thanks.
So generally speaking, trying to buy a car in a hope it's due VRT releif, is quite a gamble.

mickdw

You could ask if seller would take the car in for vrt appraisal.

CiniO

Allright. That's some idea.
So VRT repayable amount is being established on the spot during VRT export inspection.
However inspection proceeded by previous owner would be no good to me, as they only can issue refund to current owner.

So I assume I'd have to ask the seller to take car for inspection, pay €38 to find out how much VRT refund is due, and then I can buy car off him, and take it for another inspection in my name, to actually get a refund myself.

mickdw

I don't know if they come up with the rebate figure immediately or if it's sent out but regardless, this is the only way to be sure unless you knew the car from day one and the history of how it was bought.
You are right in that you would have to get the inspection redone after purchase to enable refund to you not previous owner.

colm_mcm

mickdw wrote: »

You could ask if seller would take the car in for vrt appraisal.

Doesn't work like that AFAIK. checks are done post-export.

mickdw

If that is the case, its an utter joke of a system. So you go in, get your bit of paper with rebate figure following appraisal and then they withdraw the rebate after export.

colm_mcm

That's my understanding of it.

CiniO

I enquired with revenue if they could give me info if vehicle had it's vrt paid in the first place (gave reg number), but they didn't give me that information.

They replied the following though:

To access the VRT refundable on your vehicle, you should make an appointment with the NCTS at 01- 4135975 and have your vehicle assessed for a VRT Export Refund. The NCTRS will advise you on what is repayable on the vehicle. Regards

So from that reply, I understand that NCTS will tell me there and then how much is repayable. And if VRT was not paid in the first place, they will inform me there and then that nothing is repayable.
That's at least how I understand that reply.

colm_mcm

Check it out but I'm of the impression they can give you a figure but the decision to refund is only made after export. Hope I'm wrong.

xabi

Most cars on the road will have paid VRT

mgbgt1978

Most will...apart from the exceptions listed by Colm almost a month ago.


...and if there's even one car in the whole Country not due a rebate Cinio will track it down:)

mickdw

xabi wrote: »

Most cars on the road will have paid VRT

You would frighten the number that are exempt on the disabled driver / passenger scheme. My local car dealer opened my eyes a few years back. He said it saved his business the number of people he had guaranteed to be changing every 2 years. Some of the cars I see with the zero rated tax disc are very surprising - in a small town where you know the owners.
my point is that there is no way you could assume that all cars have vrt paid.

unkel

I'd say there's a brown envelope thing going on in your small town, Mick

You are right of course that you can not assume every car has VRT paid, but surely the cars given for free to people with disabilities and the cars brought in by people emigrating to Ireland make up only a tiny minority of all cars on the road?

That said, I feel there should be a public site where you can check how much VRT was paid when you enter the reg. Same as the official motor tax site (motortax.ie) where you can check how much the motor tax is when you enter the reg

colm_mcm

I don't think they'll be going out of their way to make a vrt refund easy

CiniO

colm_mcm wrote: »

I don't think they'll be going out of their way to make a vrt refund easy

Export inspection went fairly smooth.
He only checked mileage and VIN. Nothing else. In fact he actually asked me where the VIN was, and asked me to read it to him, so in the worst case I could have told him whatever he wanted to hear.

But anyway - he didn't give me export refund figure right away, because he said that my exact model wasn't in their database. Indeed when I checked in VRT calculator beforehand, there was SE version, there was Executive version, but mine had SE EXECUTIVE in logbook, so this wasn't in their database.
He said Revenue will come back to me with a figure soon, and indeed after few days I got a letter with refund amount.

So all smooth so far.
Car is going abroad tomorrow - see how it goes further.

mickdw

I figure a useful experiment to get a definitive answer on whether the vrt inspection will tell whether a rebate is due or not would be for someone with a car brought in vrt free to book an appointment and see what happens.

CiniO

So another update - maybe someone will just be interested how the process works.

So I bought the car in October. Honda CRV 2005 2.0 petrol, automatic, 60k miles. Paid €2500 at auction.
Had to wait about 3 weeks for logbook. Also car didn't come with NCT cert (just disc) so I had to order cert - cost about €18 afair.
I booked for Export examination in first week of December. Cost €38. As above - they didn't give me VRT refund value, but it came in post few days later - VRT refund valued at €1224.
I exported car just about a week after inspection (to Poland).
Got the lights converted to LHD traffic (€200) and got the car registered in Poland right at the beginning of January (less than 30 days from VRT inspection) - cost €200 including registration tax.
I had to wait for 30 days for full registration cert from Polish car registration office, so got that at the beginning of February.
Then I got a VRT refund form filled in, attached copy of Polish reg cert and sent to revenue.
By beginning of March I got correspondence with listed repayment account details to call them if they are incorrect.
And few days ago refund came to the account. It includes interest, so I got around €1500.

I'm fairly happy with the outcome - as in the end car itself cost me only €1056 + cost of registration in Poland and converting light to LHD - so €1456.

Similar cars over there (but LHD) cost around €5000 to €6000 - that's in case anyone is wondering why would someone from Continent want to buy a car in Ireland. Sometimes it just makes sense.

mickdw

you got the guts of 300 interest on 1224 even though there was little to no delay on the side of Irish revenue. That's interesting.
Interesting to know how it played out to a finish so thanks for that.