Buying a commercial pick up

grayh0und

Hello

Im keen on buying a Nissan Nevara pick up. We do have a farm but primary use would certainly be private use - with the wife sharing it to drive kids around and me for other reasons too.

We have just moved to Ireland and I’m a bit confused as to how this works and if possible from a tax / registration perspective.

Further more it seems they are a lot cheaper up north. Understand i can pay a fee to import it into the republic but any other things i should be considering?

Wildcard7

grayh0und wrote: »

Hello

Im keen on buying a Nissan Nevara pick up. We do have a farm but primary use would certainly be private use - with the wife sharing it to drive kids around and me for other reasons too.

We have just moved to Ireland and I’m a bit confused as to how this works and if possible from a tax / registration perspective.

I'm not sure if everything is 100% correct but from the way I understand it, it's like this:
- You can tax and insure a commercial for private use. No Ifs or Buts.
- Not every insurance company might be keen on it, you should shop around (you should do that anyway)
- Commercial cars are sometimes advertised including VAT and sometimes excluding VAT. If the ad doesn't state, this should be the first thing you ask the dealer, as it makes a big difference on the price you'll pay.
- Commercials are taxed under the old system, based on engine size, when taxed privately.


Also if you just have moved to Ireland you will probably not have any no claims bonus with an insurance - I didn't when I moved here, even though I had a letter from another big european insurance company stating I had been without a claim for 10+ years. So prepare to pay a fortune. Depending on your age you might even have trouble getting insurance for something > 2l.


Edit: Since you have a farm, you might want to tax and insure as a commercial anyway, but strictly speaking if you use it mainly privately that would not be entirely legal. Check the forum search.

grayh0und

thanks for the feedback wildcard. i swear i had read someplace that commercial vehicles are ONLY able to be used for work purposes - not even flexibility to pick the kids up from school. spoke with our insurance crowd this morning, and they seemed to think since we had a herd number we could still get a commercial and use for private a well. awaiting feedback..

luckily my irish wife has been on a policy here for the last 10 years, even though we've been oversees. currently have a car insured for a reasonable annual rate but time will tell what / if the pick-up would come in at.

Wildcard7

grayh0und wrote: »

thanks for the feedback wildcard. i swear i had read someplace that commercial vehicles are ONLY able to be used for work purposes - not even flexibility to pick the kids up from school. spoke with our insurance crowd this morning, and they seemed to think since we had a herd number we could still get a commercial and use for private a well. awaiting feedback..

luckily my irish wife has been on a policy here for the last 10 years, even though we've been oversees. currently have a car insured for a reasonable annual rate but time will tell what / if the pick-up would come in at.

The rules are pretty clear. A commercial vehicle can be used only for commercial tasks - that includes your commute to work, and if you happen to go for lunch during work or for dinner on your way back, that's fair play too. If you can drop your kids to school because the school is on the way to the hardware shop where you need to go anyway, I doubt anyone will protest.


But if you hop into your pickup with the intention to use it for something not at all work related, that would be illegal. See for example here:



https://www.independent.ie/life/motoring/car-news/business-and-pleasure-can-your-van-do-double-duty-as-a-family-car-36340692.html


"If you register it as commercial - and you can only do so for a true van, pick-up or commercial SUV - you get a favourable road tax rate, but you can't use it for even occasional private use as a family car, not even as part of the school run."



Frankly I'm a bit surprised that your insurance would tell you it's legal to use a commercially taxed vehicle privately. Was there at least some winking and elbow nudging involved? Because otherwise they were either misinformed or openly lying to you.


Of course what you are allowed to do is not necessarily the same as what you can get away with. If you're a farmer and you live rural you can most likely drive your pickup for 10 years without getting fined. But that's a different story and it's up to you if you want to take the risk. You're the one getting the fine and the points if you're caught.

grayh0und

I misunderstood your first message. I think you mean to to type - You canN'T tax and insure a commercial for private use. No Ifs or Buts. - but you typed can.

Yes that's what I read, which is why I was surprised.

I can see a farmer making the case for the fact that there would always be a reason to be using it for commercial use, even if it was a 'private' trip. "I'm heading to town to get the groceries, but I also must pick up a tool." "I'm driving to the family's house, but need to grab a bag of ration. And so on, and so forth. But yes - I'm surprised the insurance company would suggest it is okay for us to do this. Even though they didn't explicitly, from what I understood after speaking with them it was okay to use it for private use as well.

Mooooo

Insurance isn't the issue really as most commercial policies will cover private use also. It's more revenue or the guards if stopped, they may check that it is being used for commercial use. Dunno how well it's enforced.
You could of course be going to feed or move cattle any time and a reel and few pigtails in the back may be proof of it, kids there to help...

selectamatic

Insurers seem to be happy to provide commercial insurance with social and domestic use added on (particularly to farmers) so you would be 100% insured.

Its the tax that is more rigid. Technically if you're taxed for commercial use then thats all you should be doing but to be honest its nearly an unenforceable law especially in the case of something so vague as "farm use" hence its basically never applied.

grayh0und

Right - I was just thinking there that the most important thing to me would be to know what we were covered for insurance. The tax savings between private or commercial use is only a couple hundred euro. If insurance wouldn't care how it was registered I could tax for private but insure for commercial.

Thanks all for the feedback.

Wildcard7

grayh0und wrote: »

I misunderstood your first message. I think you mean to to type - You canN'T tax and insure a commercial for private use. No Ifs or Buts. - but you typed can.

Not a typo, but I worded it in a way that's easy to misunderstand. You CAN insure a commercial vehicle (van, pickup, etc) for private use - but then you need to insure and tax it privately. The vehicle still remains a commercial vehicle (that's why it will be taxed weirdly, not based on CO2).


But I think you got the idea of it now anyway, so whatever you do, good luck