French Leasing

[thefatlady]

I seem to remember an earlier post on this but I can't find it.

There's a boat I'm interested in which has French Leasing with about 40% of the price remaining payable over 30 months. That would effectively be an interest-free loan, since the total outstanding would be deducted from the purchase price.

I also seem to remember that there were strings attached, such as paying for French registration and being subject to some awkward French regulations.

Can anyone enlighten me, please?

 

[compie1]

John,
If the boat is regist. in France you'l have some tax to pay every year, like Road tax but with 2 x 435 Hp pretty high € i think... some can help here me thinks.

 

[Nautorius]

Was wondering about the same thing. There is a nice 2004 Prestige 34Ht available for Leasing over `10 years that works out a lot cheaper than buying one with a Marine Mortgage. Guess it is not as saleable, but with the savings could probably pay it off in 5 years.

Cheers

Paul /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[tcm]

Yes, i had a boat on fr lease for a while. The boat was originalluy french registered and hence annual french sailing tax is payable. Dunno about the rates now but for a 75foot power boat it was 12,000 euros a year.

However, there is nothing (other than permission from the lease company) stopping it being re-registered on Part 1 in UK despite being on a french lease - if you as keeper are british, which is what i did. At the end of the lease the final payment transfers ownership, and all went well for me.

On a lease, i believe there is the (increduibly remote) issue of the boat not being your property and hence could sort-of possibly be seized as asset of the leasing company if it suddenly had some giant liability. Though never ever heard of this happening.

I have no idea about the transfer of the lease, so i imagine that this wd have to be agreed with leasing company before "purchase"- i put this in inverted commas cos really the leasing compnay must be the owner, really, of all or part of vessel .

For a french-registered boat, I understand VAT (TVA) is definitely sorted : if it has an orange book of french registration (called the Acte de franchisation, it's like a log book) then VAT has been paid and cannot have been reclaimed. It is inside that book that the annual stamp (like a postage stamp) you get is placed each year upon paying sailing tax, and perhaps this is why french authorities of course only want to see originals not copies of french (or other) boat reg documents.

I think you need agreement from the french leasing company to take over the lease, and (i think) you would also like to reregister as a uk vessel with you as keeper (becoming owner after final payment) so there will be no more sailing tax, which i wd wildly guess at 5000 euros a year for 45 footer. My lease was with ING - all conducted very nicely and smoothly with no sharkiness which is sometimes prevalent in uk credit deals.

Smoother of course wd be that the lease is settled and then you buy it, but the vendor may not be able to afford this, and there mite even be a penalty (or unlikely any credit) for early settlement. So it should be sortable but i think you def need to contact the leasing co

 

[thefatlady]

Interesting. It sounds like it isn't worth paying the French tax, but I shall dig a little further. This is with the Banque Populaire de la Côte D'Azur (whoever they are), although the boat is at the far end of Corsica.

The boat is French registered and French VAT paid.
I am going to see the broker on Tuesday to view another similar boat, so I shall ask him a bit more.

If I want the boat, I assume that the vendor should be able to settle the lease out of the sale proceeds simultaneously with the sale.

Thanks for the info. Useful.