I have slightly different situation.

I have been living in Switzerland for more than a year but did not bring my household items (40" LCD TV, Music Systems, Books, Cutlery, etc). All these items are over 3 years old.

I will now be travelling back to the UK to bring them by car. Will these items attract customs or other duties because I have lived here more than a year and did not bring my personal belongings within the first year?

Do they all need to be packed in any specific manner and labelled.

Thanks

We are just in the process of our initial move but I was told by the relocation firm that on the first 18.44 form I have to declare it as a partial move i.e. it will be done in more than one load.

Have you already completed an 18.44? If you have and haven't declared it as a partial move I think your stumped. If you haven't completed one yet you should be fine.

I was told we then had 18 months from our residency registration to move as many loads as we wanted. Each time we had to take the 18.44 to show at customs but after the first time they have a log of your details and know to expect more.

Does that make sense? If you need more info pm me as I have the emails from the relocation people and they also sent me electronic copies of the forms so I'd be happy to pass them on.

Hope that helps :-)

Thanks Angelae
I just found out from the Swiss FCA website that you have 18 months. Fortunately, I am in time. I have not yet filled in the 18.44. This will be the first time we will bring.
Do we have to submit the 18.44 before we bring the stuff ? If so, where do we submit? My understanding is, you complete the 18.44 and bring it along with the car !
Any more info would help..

Thanks again

Hello all,

I am in almost the exact same situation, having been here nearly 3yrs and only now deciding to import our furniture (for various reasons). Most of the stuff we will be bringing is fairly standard furniture and kitchen utensils etc.

The Swiss customs website seems to indicate that outside of the 18mth period to bring items through duty-free, that you will need to pay VAT and duty charges. Does anyone have experience of this?

We will be bringing the goods via a removal company who specialise in bringing things to Switzerland (Luker Bros). I'm just slightly concerned that we will be charged duty for bringing our household effects from the UK. We are EU nationals, which I understand means that we don't need to provide proof of residency, just proof of employment in Switzerland.

If anyone has any tips/information that would be excellent.

After doing some more research it appears as though we may need to pay duty on the goods we import, or, ask for a special exemption beforehand from customs. Has anybody done this?

I am wondering how carefully the customs check the 18.44 form? If I complete it with the correct move date (around 3yrs ago), are they likely to check this in detail and then charge duty?

Probably... there are rules and they are not keen on people flouting them. I imagine the degree to which the forms are examined depends on your method of bringing them in. My experience of moving household stuff ourselves, in 2 trips with van hire from the UK - well within the time limit and we had the relevant paperwork - was that we were not asked to show any paperwork at the border when we said it was our personal effects. We were asked to show what was in the back of the van when we exited Switzerland with an empty van the first time though!

(Also if all your stuff is well over 3 years old now it may not be worth very much, if you could get some sort of valuation that might help minimise the risk of a high bill.)

Thanks. The intention certainly isn't to mislead the customs officials, I will fill the form in with the correct entry date. However, as we will be using a removal company they are almost certainly going to inspect the paperwork at the very least.

I will try to get an exemption from customs, as when we initially removed we didn't bring any personal effects. Hopefully we can convince them to let us bring our old furniture in duty-free. If not, hopefully we can convince them that the value is not huge.

If anyone has tried to do this and succeeded/failed I would love to hear about it.

When we moved here the plan was for a short, stay, 1-2 years max. So we brought in a container of household goods, but left a bunch of stuff in storage back home.

However, true to the best laid plans of mice and men, five years later we were still here. As it seemed silly to keep paying storage fees, and I could not get back home to deal with getting rid of it, so we had the rest of the stuff shipped over. Unfortunately, the original shipment was not listed as partial shipment - meaning that we had already used up our import allowance and any additional goods brough in were indeed subject to duties.

But as all of the stuff was pretty old there was little value to declare. I can't remember how much the duty and fees were on that second shipment, but I seem to remember it wasn't very much, certainly less than another year's storage fees.