Amazingly due to the different tax treatments within the EU the price of second hand left hand drives appears ferociosly high particularly holland belgium denmark . Does anyone know the cheapest European country for SECOND HAND used cars. Or if there any reputable dealers here in the UK?
Why do I want a second hand left hand drive. Well I am moving to Spain and unitl you have residency you cannot import a new one. Plus, in total they charge 28% tax for the pleasure of doing so.
Any help greatly appreciated.
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You cannot import a new one
I don't know exactly what the Spanish rules are, but it is absolutely forbidden under EU law for them to impose a tax on importing new cars (or anything else) from EU states if the same tax would not be imposed on cars sold and/or manufactured within Spain.
If you buy a car tax free here, in Belgium, or anywhere else, you can take it to Spain and pay only Spanish VAT and the same amount of Spanish car tax or whatever that you would have to pay on a Spanish supplied car. Anything else would be so flagrantly in breach of EU rules that it would be simply impossible.
As for importing a car without residency - well why would you want to? There's no law against non-residents bringing the car into the country, they just can't register it presumably. That makes perfect sense to me.
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The Spanish rules are really quite complex. Although they have been relaxed and simplified recently.
The difficulty in practical terms is that if I buy a new car in Belgium it will be on temporary plates. I drive to Spain in order to register it, and pay VAT I need to have Spanish residency ( which I don't). So i will be driving a car on temporary plates which is illegal, I can't get number plates till registered.
There is a 12% tax to be paid in addtion to the 16% VAT on all imported cars but you can't import a new car without residency. I am happy to pay both these taxes but from a timing perspective it is impossible. So really my best solution is to buy a used car with permanent plates on it, which i can drive around for six months or so until I register.
So really all I want to know is where the cheapest pre-owned left hand drives are to be found?
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Florida is good value,especially for domestic models,cheap enough to bring to Europe,still got to pay import duty and VAT and whatever local registration TAX applies(£25 in the UK).
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What is this 12% tax? If it's payable only on imported cars, it is completely and utterly illegal under EU law. (It may be that it's payable on new cars too, but because it's not reclaimed with VAT it's completely transparent to you.)
Also, as a non-resident, you may find it impossible to buy a used car in Germany for export without temporary plates. If it is significantly cheaper to do that than to buy a car in Spain then why not register it here?
I'm sure that will work out cheaper than going to one of the few left hand drive dealers in the country, where they seem to want £5k for a 100k, six year old Xantia worth no more than £1500.
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Excuse me if I am stating the obvious, but why can't you buy a s/h car in Spain? I owned a villa at Pals, near L'Estartit, for a number of years 1983-2001 and used to let friends, relatives visit as well as ourselves. I bought a s/h Renault Clio in 1989 for the use of anyone who was staying there. I wasn't a permanent resident of Spain, yet I got the car registered in my name. My property agent handled all the licensing etc just as he did the maintenance of the house, payment of bills etc.
Maybe I paid more for the car because it had a tax component in the resale price and I could have gotten the same thing in France for less but it was cheap enough anyway and if I'd saved anything cash-wise that would have been offset by hassle. On a small s/h car the numbers are pretty small, anyway.
Maybe I've missed something here, or I've had a few (Filipino not Spanish) San Miguels too many this p.m.
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I think I have. I bought the car in 1999, apologies.
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Dear Growler,
yes your right. I have just experienced the rough southern spanish tracks first hand so i think any used 4x4 would be fairly trashed second hand or could be.Rather than a spanking new or almost new 4x4 driven on the ultra effcient smooth roads of Holland or Belgium.
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If you're worried about Spanish farm tracks why not get one of those indestructible 2CV derivative pickups, always painted orange for some reason, which lurch all over the highway and clearly negotiate rough roads without a care, and which in my times in Catalunya seemed ever to be driven by locals who had clearly enjoyed a certain sufficiency of lunch :-)
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Hi Dave
It is my understanding that in addtion to the VAT that is paid in all countries there is a levy that residents pay on vehicles. In the UK we dont have one in denmark it is upwards of 200% in holland its about 30% These are all legal levies that individual governments charge their citizens. Otherwise Dutch citizens would buy an import in belgium and pay ?7000 less for a car depriving their government of a useful tax.
Its a weird situation but if I call a belgium dealer for a new RAV its 19,000 ? but the same model with 25,000 on the clock on Belgium plates is ?26,500 Euro.
I think your right though I will import a car to the UK register it here paying the 17.5% VAT and then drive it to Spain paying the 12% registration tax.
FYI here is where i gleaned most of my info www.spanishpropertyco.com/38.htm
Thanks for your insights though
But I think you
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Just buy the car in Spain if you possibly can.
Having read that website, it appears (although it could be sloppily written) that the tax is payable to register imported cars only - i.e., nothing is payable on a new Spanish car. If that is true, there is no way that the 12% tax can possibly be legal although if that website is correct you'd have to sue to prove the point. It is unquestionably something called a 'measure equivalent to a quantative restriction' which is completely forbidden under EU law.
They are obviously entitled to charge a registration fee but it is only allowed to reflect their actual expenses. The idea that it somehow costs £12k to fill out the forms for a Ferrari and 'only' £300 for the same forms for a Daewoo Matiz is absolutely absurd.
(Incidentally, reading that website it appears that you'd only have to pay 7% on a diesel RAV4). Assuming you have to pay this, it could make a Spanish car more financially lucrative. Also, if you are buying the car LHD for export, you can elect to claim back the UK VAT and pay Spanish VAT at 16% instead. (I'm not sure of the procedure for this but the manufacturer will know).
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No I suspect the price of this tax is included in the price of a new rav4 in Spain. Which weighs in at 29,000 Euros on the road. This broadly equates to a 21,000 new price + 28% tax. After all if these taxes were not legitimate then a car buyer in Holland would never buy in holland but in belgium and just pay the dutch VAT( which works out much cheaper than from a dutch ealership. And a buyer in Belgium would never buy in Belgium but buy in Holland and Pay beglium VAT ( which is much cheaper than a car from a beglium dealership). These extra taxes exist acros the whole of the EU. So what is the point of EU one may ask. Well it appears that the car industry is something of an exception. You only have to read excerpts from EU legislation which talks at length about its attempts to Harmonise EU car tax rules. The taxes also known as green taxes in some places are designed to keep car ownership down in various member countries. ( not a bad idea when you look at the state of UK roads)
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Yeah, there's no problem if this tax has to be paid on all cars registered in Spain, whether or not they were originally registered abroad.
However, the way the article is written suggests that it's not, but then the people who wrote it probably aren't experts in EU law and aren't aiming at a particularly knowledgeable audience.
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We are busy immigrating to the uk from Florida USA.Do you want to buy our 2000 Jeep Cherokee,Grand Laredo?Its like new,with 66000 miles on it.What I want to know is,can I import my left hand drive van into the uk and be allowed to drive it there?I really love my little and really dont want to sell it.
Regards Allan
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Yes you can bring your vehicle to the UK,you will need to register it,and it will need an SVA test,but as its LHD it is easy enough to get it thru that.
Probably cheaper to do that than sell in Florida and buy a similar replacement in the UK and with something that size LHD is no real problem,apart from drive thru KFC and carpark ticket machines.
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The following answer to a reader's letter in our local paper may be relevant:
www.roundtownnews.com/articles.asp?ID=4286&fecha_p...5
Unless the rules have changed you don't require residency for car purchase, but you do need to be on the "padron" - the local electoral list - which is a fairly simple matter (my car dealer arranged it)
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