The state keeps collecting ...
01/24/2016
There are regulations that are immediately perceived as unfair, even though hardly anyone seems to be bothered by them. Classic cars, for example, are not so rarely sold from one country to another. Because they are usually cherished collector's items, they do not change much over the years. If the old car is now returned to a country from which it was once exported, one would assume that import tax, VAT and other duties would not be due again. After all, these taxes were already paid on a previous import.
Wrong, because the Swiss Customs Act (ZG) Article 10, paragraph 3 "Domestic returned goods" states, for example:
"If the returned goods are not returned to the original consignor, they may only be re-imported duty-free within five years of exportation."
Of course, only in the rarest of cases is the buyer also the original owner, and the five years are comparatively short in the case of a car. In addition to customs duty, which is not very costly in terms of weight, automobile tax (4%) and VAT (8%) are charged on the current value of the vehicle (in Switzerland), which makes up the bulk of import duties and taxes.
But it gets worse. A re-imported car is also treated by the registration authorities as a car that has never been registered in the country (in this case Switzerland). The car must therefore undergo the complete import test and, in extreme cases, individual approval, and it is quite possible that a road traffic license will be refused during these tests, even though the same car could have been successfully registered seven or ten years earlier (in largely identical condition).
Open borders? Not for classic car buyers and sellers. And it can be quite expensive. If a car is sold back and forth between Switzerland and Germany twice within 20 years, the aforementioned taxes are due several times, and the state collects each time. And with classic car prices rising, the taxes become even more expensive with each import ...
