I've already read a lot about importing car to Switzerland, but still cant find answers for my situation.
Let's start from the beginning.
We moved to Switzerland in the end of August, we declared our household items on 18.44 form, but because we werent thinking of keeping our UK car we did not put it on that form. All the papers work was done by the removing company anyway.

We drove the car from Uk to Switzerland the same day as the removing company, but pass the board in different place. We were going to take the car back to England and sell it.
The thing is that due to some circumations we could not sell our UK car so we keep it with us in Switzerland without declaring it to customs and we decided to keep it.

What should we do now? Maybe just go out from Switzerland and then on way back declare it to customs, or go now to custom office and explain our situation?
Will we need to pay import duty on that car? We own it for more than 3 years but we did not declare it together with our household items.

One more thing, my partner got B permit dated from January 2011, so nearly 1 year, he also changed his Uk licence to swiss one. So does that mean he cannot drive Uk plated car? I should add that he is the registered keeper of the car, but mostly I am the one who is driving it. I still got UK driving licence.

you could do what I did and get international european car insurance in the UK so you are insured for longer than the normal 3months max (using the car out of UK) ,take the car back periodically to get the MOT up to date and the tax disc can be done on line (you can use some UK family address and they can post it to you).
You have one year from the start of the B permit to get it registered....I've been here two years and have just taken the punt not to get caught.Actually not seen any posts here about what happened to anyone who got caught ?.Personally I think the swiss police can't be assed you never see them not even on the motorways and I dive on them a fare bit.

From my own point of view I will sell my car back in the UK sometime soon and get a swiss car .I did look into the conversion and it wasn't such a big deal but at the end of the day you end up with a left hand drive car with swiss plates which no one may want.....depends on may factors like value of car,how long will you be staying etc etc (its the old cabbage,fox and the rabbit puzzel).

Anyway for the moment make sure the TAX disc is always current else you won't be able to drive it in the UK for driving over here it is not required.If the MOT expires you can still drive it (in the UK) as long as you going to the MOT appointment .Keep it insured at all times ,I only found one agent in the UK which sells this kind of policy called Stuart Collins & Co .Also buy some snow tyres for the winter they are absolutely worth it ! IMO at some stage you will get sick of taking it back to the UK to keep it legal but at least you have sometime to think about it

Anyway hope this helps at the end of the day you need to make you own decision how "legal to be"

Mostly wrong feedbacker2!

Your car has to be legal in its registered country to be legal here, so no valid tax disc and its not legal to drive here either.

your have 12 months from when you first enter, regardless of permit type.

as long as you bought the car 6 months before you first registered here then you shouldn't have to pay import duty, but you will need an eu1 export certificate from the uk

If you have a swiss drivers license then you shouldn't be driving a uk registered car, lots of threads already on this, in fact if you have a swiss license then your car doesn't have valid insurance, most, if not all, uk insurance requires you to have a uk license and be a uk resident, if you have neither then you are skating on very thin ice indeed.

As for will you be stopped? well maybe, my wife was stopped by the police driving our uk registered car, fortunatly we had already started the import procedure.

Is it worth it? again, lots of threads on that, is the car something special? or special to you? no, then its not, sell it and buy one here.

ETA if your MOT runs out while you are here then you are stuffed, forget about driving it to the uk for a prearranged mot! you'll set off all the anpr cameras at the port / tunnel and good luck explaining why you don't have tax, mot or valid insurance.

Chances are you'll get away with it and never get stoppped, even if you do get stopped you may be able to bluff your way out of it. (not sure if the police can tell that you live in CH from your passport details)

But... if you ever have a prang you'll be up the paddle without a creek!

Can you drive around all day with that on your mind?

BigBlue is correct, and there have been MANY threads about this.

You should stop driving this car immediately! As you are legally registered here you are not allowed to drive a UK car here! You can obtain permission at the border, by paying Fr 25,--

To be legal, you could put it on a trailer and drive it across the frontier. Then declare it to customs still on the trailer. You will now have all the expenses of importing a car with headlights and fog lights wrongly installed. As the steering wheel will still be on the wrong side, the car will be nearly worthless after importing it.

Another alternative, and the only sensible one, is to put it on a trailer and drive it back to UK, and then put it in an auction.

This company has a car trailer, about CHF 70 per day,

http://yellow.local.ch/en/d/Givisiez...where=Givisiez

http://www.easyloc.ch/0501.htm . Email michel@easyloc.ch

That is VERY poor advice! Encouraging him to drive a smuggled car without insurance.

Read what I wrote again please. Especially the last line. I'm on your side dude.

as previously stated its up to you how legal to be I was only explaining my own situation I assume members of this forum are old enough to make up their own minds on such things...........
But agree with you all I need to get legal !!

Funny that - I was always under the impression that something was either LEGAL or ILLEGAL.

Driving a car without valid insurance or certificate of roadworthiness (from the registered country) is ILLEGAL

Thanks for all your answers. I should update a bit on that post. we have got valid insurance from Stuard&collins, valid MOT, and Tax disc, so the car is completly legal to drive here for a moment. Mostly I drive that car and I still got UK driving licence, so this is ok as well.
Week ago we went to England for a short brake by car, and on the way back we declared it on board. we just received a letter, that we got just 1 month left to put swiss number plates, cos my partner got his B permit from end of January 2011. So seems like we are already in importing process.

What car is it (make & model) do you own it or does a bank?

I'd by a left hooker either here or Germany and sell the UK car in the UK

This is good advice.

It's alot of hassle and expense to register, cost of replacing the headlights and passing the swiss MOT. Repairs can be another problematic due to RHD specific parts not being stocked and mean importing with maybe a 2 week leadtime while your car sits at the garage.

This is not to mention problems with parking houses etc.

Plus you get stared at even more (although sometimes I found that funny )

When we moved we actually ending up buying a left hand drive car through a UK company who we dealt with in the months running up to leaving. The car was actually delivered to the UK on export plates and we drove across here in it and handled all the pleasantries! However, they were brilliant in prepping us for that, really knowledgeable. So much so that we're buying a second car but I'm buying it from them again and picking it up from Belgium this time for ease.

Getting an Range Rover Evoque which was also cheaper than here too!

Check them out though, Insignis Cars at www.prestige-car-sales.com. Speak to Chris he's a top guy sooooo helpful!

We had the problem of a UK-registered automobile garaged in Switzerland, almost never used, for a couple of years.

After research of Swiss laws, long discussion with Swansea and a petition (dismissed) to the European Parliament, it turns out this is the law:

-- An unregistered foreign car may be garaged in Switzerland off-road and used up to 30 days by a nonresident (somewhat simplifying, since it doesn't help the OP anyway)

-- EU law forbids the driving in any EU country of an untaxed car registered in a different EU country. The only way legally to get the car back to Britain once the tax disc expired would be (1) get Customs plates for it to drive through France; (2) put it on a trailer or tow-truck; (3) use "transporter" or "dealer" plates (I don't know about French law on this; in the UK such plates (red-on-white) can only be used when the dealer has a proprietary interest in the car (thus we could sell a garaged car located in London with a SORN and the buying dealer could use such plates; but we couldn't have them used for a car brought from Switzerland that we were keeping)

-- In fact, no French gendarme knows the law as well as I do, and we did drive the car here and there from time to time in France. Until the day the clutch gave out on the N5 and luckily the two traffic lights between Lugrin and Vouvry were green, and the Swiss customs officer waved us through. Because if we'd had to take the car out of second gear it would never have started again. And the VW dealer in Vouvry said it wasn't worth fixing so we gave it to him for parts. DVLA problem solved.

-- But according to the DVLA, once we arrived in the port of Dover so long as it was insured in Britain and so long as we called ahead to an MOT testing station anywhere in England or Scotland, we could drive there without a tax disc to have it inspected forthwith.

My argument that failed before the EU was that inasmuch as my daughter (to whom the car belonged, and who is an EU citizen) was using it as part of her EU cross-border self-employment rights, Britain could not make it legally impossible or impractical to tax the car while it remained abroad. And we should not have greater rights within Britain (to take the untaxed car to an MOT appointment) than we have in France (no right to drive it at all). Anyway we lost that case.

If we didn't have the (international) insurer we have, who impose no time limit on use of the car outside of Britain, the above would not have worked.

you've been been here less than 12 months and still have your UK licence then:

As far as I know all you need to do is go to customs and get an import declaration, then take that to the zoll office and import the car. (you've owned it > 6 months so no taxes).

Once you have done that you can register for it's test and swiss plates and change your licence to Swiss.

If you have been here (b-permit) more than 12 months I have no idea.