Hi,

We have been in the country for nearly 2 years and are approaching the limit of our 15.30 form duration. As far as we understood this allowed us to keep the car on English plates and not pay import tax etc for 2 years (unfortunately we had only owned car for 4 months before moving).

So as of January we have to pay the import tax and get a proper import form which I think is a 13.20. We will then go about the registering / licensing process etc . . . seems to be a bit of gamble from what we read but still going to be cheaper than buying something over here.

My question is how long do we have to actually get the car registered and on Swiss plates / TCS approved etc ? My understanding is its normally 1 year after it has been imported but not sure if that is applies as we have already had the car here for 2 years. Its also made me start to wonder if the import tax issue and vehicle registeration time limits are totally seperate and we should have made the switch a year ago ???

My current thinking is that once it is imported (13.20) that triggers the whole registration process. Indeed it seems the registration process requires a 13.20 form as part of the docs required - but want to verify this. So given we are adhering to the rules of 15.30 we should then drop into the 13.20 cycle and have a further year to get it on Swiss plates.

As my work contract expiry/renewal is Nov 2012 it is not clear if we will still be in Switzerland at end of next year or heading back to UK, so would rather leave the registration process as late as possible so I know if it is worth the hassle / money.

Does anyone have experience of same process ? Anyone with solid understanding of the rules / requirements / time frames ?

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice !

Firstly - are you sure your car is fully insured while you live over here? Just checking because you may find that you are not

Secondly - you will most likely "get away" with paying tax based on the cars current value - and not the value at when you arrived. That is really what the "2 year" thing is all about.

Basically - if you owned the car for 6 months - you'd have been best advised to import it at day one. There is no point waiting as no duty is - um due.

However, because you hadn't, you are importing car - and the car is not classified as being part of your personal belongings. There is a link in this forum to calculate the amount of duty based on weight. As for the MWST - this will be based on the value of similar cars on Autoscout - which may well be more than you thought!!

If I was you - i'd be proactive - speak to the Zollamt as soon as you can - and get the costs from them of how much the duty will be. If it looks like being a lot - get the car back to the UK - and sell it.

Thanks for that, yes it is fully insured Regards taxes the car was second hand and I managed to get is at a very cheap price. I used the Tax calcs before and don't expect total taxes to be more than 1000 CHF even at the purchase price 2 years ago. Not sure how I'd prove UK prices these days and imagine Swiss prices are much more .. so probably best to stick with my original bill of sale.


Whilst a pain to be paying for something I already owned I don't have any issues with paying the import tax, nothing I can do about that.


What I am really interested in is the registration process which is a seperate chain of events and costs after the import tax is paid.

I have already just paid out 800 CHF to have a couple of small items fixed (needed doing anyway). But quotes to bring it up to Swiss 'standard' I'm potentially looking at another 2,500CHF then all the paperwork costs and checks which look likely to cost another 1,000CHF + time off work etc.

If I don't have to do this for a further year then at worst I end up spreading out the costs over the year .. at 'best' it might mean I can avoid all those costs completely if the car goes back to the UK before the end of 2012.

I'm hoping someone knows if this 1 year Registration window is genuine and applicable given the 15.30.

Thanks

It must be imported within 2 years

they couldn't care less what you paid or what its worth in the uk

they will go on autoscout and find the same make and model, or near abouts, look in the local papers etc etc and pick the most expensive one they can find and say yours is worth that, even if its a rhd etc

that's exactly what they did for us, and unless you have an eu1 export doc for your car from the uk they will charge you import duty on it as coming from the USA (which is higher tax then from the EU), again, thats what they did to us, on an MG even though we had every other bit of documentation to show it was made in the midlands, no export doc, its from america ching ching

Aw. I have to get here really early in the morning to give answers! Not fair!!


Anyway, I was going to say the same. They don't care what you paid for it. They will charge you on what they say it's worth which is the price in Switzerland.

Of course, CH isn't the only country that does that. Try to import a car to Argentina. You'll get a shock!

That's actually not entirely true. In theory, yes, in practice it's a little tiny bit flexible:

Meaning that they will accept an official estimation document available to a car dealership at the price of a fee.

But it has to be veeery close to the "swiss estimation" as per their database, also available from the Swiss car dealership, at a fee...

If the difference's too large, then you'll have to pay the tax based on the Swiss estimation dealership... which is quite expensive... It was easily 35% more than the german estimation in my case with 2nd had medium range car...

Source: the customs when I did the import process; and the Swiss car dealership able to do a "estimation" for a fee...

A little personal anecdote on this one.

There is a minibus which is owned by the family in the UK. Said minibus was purchased for £2000. A lower spec minibus goes for 10-14,000chf. Further more the family minibus had <10 seats from new - because it was set-up to move disabled people around.

There is a huge difference between importing a minibus (70chf per 100kg), a van (66chf per 100kg) and a car with <10 seats (15chf per 100kg + 4% duty).

The last one (car <10 seats) is why you need to know what the value of the car in CH is.

The process is deliberately complicated and expensive!