Importing - Unusual Question for the Experts

PeteD

Hi,

I am looking to import a MK5 Golf GT TDI from NI. (I am from there and would spend quite a bit of my time there and in the UK). :cool:

I dont want any trouble with the revenue so I would prefer to register my vehicle in the South. I presume that this is advisable, (how strict are they, even on a bloke with a NI accent, what are the penalties if caught? fine might be ok but wouldn't want to risk loosing the car!) :mad:

Anyway, if it keeps things all above board I have no problem paying my taxes like everyone else However as I travel alot and visit relatives in the "more protestant parts" of NI I would rather not drive on Irish plates. (Even the loyalists will eventually work out what 'IRL' on the plate means )

So, how can I pay my VRT and keep my yellows? I assume that when I import the VRO will take my V5 and notify the DLVA, which will give me huge headache when I come to tax / sell the car.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Get duplicate V5 before importing?
Import then export back to NI? - hanging on to the VRT receipt incase customs come looking (surely you cant be charged VRT twice on the same car?)

Atomic Pineapple

Man thats a real headache!

My cousin had a similiar problem he met a girl from the north and was goin with her so spent alot of time up there, he bought a NI reg car and was driving it down here on an irish licence but he reg'd the car to his womens house but even so he was told his car would still be taken off him if he didnt reg the car in the south or have a permanant address of his own in the north.

So he got married to her(the fool) and bought a house up there and travels to work from the north.

I doubt you'd be able to pay the vrt and keep the cars NI reg plates

BrianD

The answer is in what you are attempting to do ... registration. Once you do that a registration number is issued and must be displayed. If you want to tax and insure it in the republic the same reg number must be on the plates as on the discs. It is impossible to register the vehicle in the RoI and legally keep the original plates from outside of the jurisdiction. A car can only be registered in one country. Even if you did leave them on you would probably be done for road tax etc in the North!

Your only option is use plates that are illegal in the RoI but might fool some of your loyalist friends - leave off the the blue and the IRL and use a yellow rear plate. Otherwise you could register it to a friends/relatives address up North and insure and tax it up there as well.
Keep the odd petrol receipt to show that you take the car out of the republic at least every six months.

Our man in Havana

Probably the safest option.

I knew someone who had a ROI reg on a yellow plate. It fooled me for a few moments but it would probably fool the mervyns for quite a while, long enough to get away safely:D

PeteD

Do you think that the "odd petrol receipt" showing petrol purchased in NI / UK would keep customs happy if they came looking ???

mackerski

PeteD wrote:

Do you think that the "odd petrol receipt" showing petrol purchased in NI / UK would keep customs happy if they came looking ???

Hardly - most NI drivers with any opportunity to do so buy their petrol in the republic...

Dermot

kluivert

Easy registered address will be a member of your family that lives in the North.

Residential Rules from the Revenue may help solve your problem as well. If you spend 183 days or more out of the South then you cant be taxed registered as residential after three years and become resident in another fiscal area. I dont know if this helps just throwing ideas around.

ambro25

PeteD wrote:

However as I travel alot and visit relatives in the "more protestant parts" of NI I would rather not drive on Irish plates.

(i) register it in (put the V5 details as-) your relatives' name & address

(ii) draft a simple 1-page contract for you, you relative and a witness to sign and date stating that the car is your personal property and may not be disposed of by the relative, or listed as his/her assets, under any circumstances.

Get the contract notarised for added peace of mind

The contract is not because you could not/would not trust your relatives, but in case they get declared bankrupt/bailiffs come sniffing for stuff to auction.

The car cannot be confiscated if you can show (by showing the V5 to the Gardai/Customs) that it is not "your" property - you've just had a "lent of it" while the owner's on holidays - so yes, keep those petrol/shopping/whatever receipts 'lying about' in the car door pockets, as additional 'ammo' to show the Gardai/Customs, if/when required. Better if you have 2 or more NI bank cards, so that the receipts don't all show your same IE Visa or Laser number, as well.

EDIT: IANAL, so the above not to be construed as legal-proof, naturally

MrPudding

Unfortunately Irish residents are not allowed to borrow another persons car or otherwise drive it unless VRT has been paid on it. This covers cars owned by non-residents and they *can* be confiscated regardless of who owns it.

My French GF and myself did a lot of research into this as we wanted to import a right hand drive car from France. They pretty much have the VRT thing sown up. The only exception we could find was if the car was owned by another person who was your employer. In that case you could drive it with no VRT paid on .

MrP

ambro25

MrPudding wrote:

Irish residents

Not wanting to be anal or nitpicking, but that's 2 words that need some further refining - Irish residents as in residents of Irish nationality? or Irish residents as in residents in the Irish Republic but not necessarily of Irish nationality?

MrPudding wrote:

The only exception we could find was if the car was owned by another person who was your employer. In that case you could drive it with no VRT paid on.MrP

Your Irish employer or any other EU employer? If the latter, that's a pretty easy loophole to exploit if you know a lil'bit about EU corporate setups, IMO. Sounds a bit too good to be true, tbh.

BrianD

PeteD wrote:

Do you think that the "odd petrol receipt" showing petrol purchased in NI / UK would keep customs happy if they came looking ???

Not sure but you need to show some indication that the car has been out of the Republic no less than six months previous to the time you are stopped. Normally you could show a car ferry ticket showing that you had gone to England but as NI has a land border this is more difficult. Petrol receipts are just a suggestion.

I don't think your tax residency has anything to do with the VRT paid or avoided. They real question is where the car is registered and where it is driven most of the time.

I wonder how many of our eastern european friends who bring over their foreign registered BMW's are stopped by customs and gardai? It doesn't bother me that much buy there seems to be a lot of eastern euro cars floating about (especially what would be expensive models for that neck of the woods).

MrPudding

Irish resident as in someone resident in Ireland. As I mentioned my GF is French, if her father came to visit and she drove his car it could be confiscated. I doubt very much they would but they could.

As for the employer any EU employer. I would imagine they would be looking for actual proof you were an employee, tax records and the like. We decided it was not worth the hassle.

MrP

ambro25

MrPudding wrote:

my GF is French, if her father came to visit and she drove his car it could be confiscated.

I somehow doubt that in the extreme. Especially if he's on a visit and can produce the Ferry tickets after the fact.

MrPudding wrote:

As for the employer any EU employer. I would imagine they would be looking for actual proof you were an employee, tax records and the like. We decided it was not worth the hassle.

Fair do's, but - what is the letter of the law on this? I can set up a shell co. in L for a few hundred €s and register myself as the only Director, nominal quartley payslip for €1 and tax returns for €4 every year, only asset as car reg'd in L - what they gonna do about it?

whippet

my GF recently imported her two cars from the UK, it was 100% legit, the process took about 7 weeks from start to finish. one was a daily run-about and the other an relativly expensive motor, which she could afford to own in the UK but not as easily in Ireland, she needed to produce:

proof of employment in the UK, proof of cesation of employment in the UK, council tax recipts, rent recipts, bank statements with activity, utility bills from the UK also proof of transfer of residency to ireland (job offer) This on top of many phone calls about her reason for coming home. All relevent documentation on both motors (original purchase invoices), she was quizzed in depth as to why she owned two cars (simply answered - 'I wanted two, so I bought two)

I would imagine any loop hole is not easily exploited. Now unfortunatly she wants to sell one but can't until it is in the county for 12 months!

The VRT offices are the most unhelpful and in efficent people to deal with, for 7 weeks, she was driving to work in ireland on yellow plates while waiting on the VRT to issue a reg number, fortunatly she was never stopped on the road.

MrPudding

ambro25 wrote:

I somehow doubt that in the extreme. Especially if he's on a visit and can produce the Ferry tickets after the fact.

Unfortunately whether you doubt it or not is not really relevent.

The revenue website wrote:

VEHICLE REGISTRATION TAX


Foreign Registered Vehicles , Temporary Exemptions - VRT 2
1. Introduction

This leaflet outlines the circumstances in which a foreign registered motor vehicle may be brought into the Republic of Ireland (the State) on a temporary basis.

The circumstances in which a foreign registered vehicle may be brought into the State vary depending on whether the vehicle is intended for private or commercial use.



PRIVATE USE

2. What Conditions Apply

Any imported vehicle which is owned by or registered in the name of a non-resident person is not required to be registered in Ireland subject to the following conditions :

• The vehicle must have been acquired with all the appropriate taxes paid and these must not have been exempted or refunded in any way. The standard registration plates in use in the domestic market of a country are normally accepted as evidence of this.
• The vehicle may not in any circumstances be driven by a State resident.
• The vehicle may not be disposed of or hired out in the State or lent to a State resident.
• The period of time that the vehicle is in the State does not exceed 12 months.
• The 12 months time limit will not apply where a person is on a task of definite duration in the State.

3. What is meant by "State resident" and "non-resident" ?

A "State resident" is a person whose normal residence is in the Republic of Ireland and a "non-resident" is anyone whose normal residence is outside this State. "Normal residence" means the place where a person usually lives (for at least 185 days each year) because of personal or occupational ties.

If a person's occupational ties are in a different country from his/her personal ties, then the country of personal ties is taken as the normal residence provided the person returns there regularly.

A person who is normally resident in the State but who lives outside the State primarily for the purpose of attending a school or university is regarded as a State resident.

4. What If I am a foreign student?

If you reside temporarily in the State primarily for the purpose of pursuing a course of studies you may bring a foreign registered Category A vehicle (see definition in paragraph 5) or a motor cycle into the State provided it is registered in the country of your normal residence. The same conditions mentioned in paragraph 2 above apply and the 12 month time limit will be extended until you have completed your course of studies.

5. What is a "Category A Vehicle"

"Category A vehicle" is a motor vehicle for the carriage of people and includes motor cars, minibuses and certain other non-commercial vehicles not exceeding 3 tonnes unladen weight.

6. What must I do if the vehicle ceases to meet the conditions for temporary exemption?

You must immediately either:-

1) permanently remove the vehicle from the State; or

2) apply to register the vehicle in the State and pay any tax due.

If you transfer residence to the State while your vehicle is temporarily in the State, you should immediately contact any one of the Vehicle Registration Offices listed at the back of this leaflet and apply for exemption from payment of tax.

I have put the relevent section in bold (in section 2, the other statements in bold are original.) When I asked what would happen if a car was driven by a resident I was told that it *could* be confiscated. Now, U think it would be a real asshole that confiscated my GF's dad's car because she was driving it but the fact remains that they can if they want.

ambro25 wrote:

Fair do's, but - what is the letter of the law on this? I can set up a shell co. in L for a few hundred €s and register myself as the only Director, nominal quartley payslip for €1 and tax returns for €4 every year, only asset as car reg'd in L - what they gonna do about it?

Not sure about this. TBH I did not put a lot of effort into researching this aspect. My non-legal and non-tax accountant brain would tell me that the scenario you outline would not work. The exemption is if your employer owns the car. If you are the director of a company then who is your employer?

Given the body of evidence they require to prove you have lived outside the state for the required period before you inport a car, as detailed by whippet, I would expect they would require a similar amount of evidence to show you were employed by a foreigner who happened to own the car you drive. This would be made harder by the fact that you will probably pay tax on your actual job and so might have difficulty explaining a second job for a foreign employer for which you have thusfar declare no taxable income from.

BrianD wrote:

I don't think your tax residency has anything to do with the VRT paid or avoided. They real question is where the car is registered and where it is driven most of the time.

As whippet has pointed out it actually has everything to do with your tax residency and little or nothing to do with where it is driven.

They really do have it sown up quite nicely.

MrP

IrishRover

If you were to import it to the Rep of Ireland and then later wanted to import it back to the UK, you might have to do the SVA (Single Vehicle Authorisation) test. http://www.dvla.gov.uk/vehicles/exptimpt.htm#A.%20%20TYPE%20APPROVAL

Sounds like a load of hassle. If you're going to be travelling back and forth do you really need to import it to the Rep of Ireland?