Tax issue? - Lots of Polish registered boats

[Poignard]

Is it easy to insure in UK a Polish register boat?

I considered re-flagging my UK-registered boat, which I keep in France, onto the Irish Registry but my insurers told me they would no longer be able to insure her. I enquired of several other insurers and they told me the same: they would only cover UK-registered boats.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

My experience with a UK registered boat in Croatia was that it was no problem at all for the 12 years I was there .... it was also pretty painless to get the boat which was not VAT paid changed to EU VAT paid when Croatia joined the EU.

The only hiccup came when I sold the boat because the UK flag upset both the Croatian and Slovenian port authorities who insisted that the boat was not VAT paid, so the buyer demanded a reduction in price - even with the Croatian import paperwork.

I ended up paying a spedition company in Croatia to issue a TL2 based on the Croatian import paperwork and it was all solved for €27.

I would say that the combination of UK Flag and TL2 or UK Flag and Temporary Admission paperwork is fine for all of the EU - certainly never had any other issues with my UK flagged boat in the EU for the duration I owned it.

One thing that is also important for small yacht owners IMO is to try and keep all your necessary paperwork issued by the same country ... passport, registration, insurance, sailing qualifications ... if only that it makes everything look more genuine as opposed to a UK citizen with a UK passport in a Polish registered boat without a Polish address or the ability to read or speak polish.

When the sh1t hits the fan and you get caught up in a problem not of your making, life is much smoother if you have all of your ducks in a row.

 

[RupertW]

My experience with a UK registered boat in Croatia was that it was no problem at all for the 12 years I was there .... it was also pretty painless to get the boat which was not VAT paid changed to EU VAT paid when Croatia joined the EU.

The only hiccup came when I sold the boat because the UK flag upset both the Croatian and Slovenian port authorities who insisted that the boat was not VAT paid, so the buyer demanded a reduction in price - even with the Croatian import paperwork.

I ended up paying a spedition company in Croatia to issue a TL2 based on the Croatian import paperwork and it was all solved for €27.

I would say that the combination of UK Flag and TL2 or UK Flag and Temporary Admission paperwork is fine for all of the EU - certainly never had any other issues with my UK flagged boat in the EU for the duration I owned it.

One thing that is also important for small yacht owners IMO is to try and keep all your necessary paperwork issued by the same country ... passport, registration, insurance, sailing qualifications ... if only that it makes everything look more genuine as opposed to a UK citizen with a UK passport in a Polish registered boat without a Polish address or the ability to read or speak polish.

When the sh1t hits the fan and you get caught up in a problem not of your making, life is much smoother if you have all of your ducks in a row.

We also had our boat in Croatia and VAT paid there - which meant briefly going onto their registration. But post 2020 I’m hearing very different things about Greece and then Spain with a concept I’d never heard before of “third country flag”.

Hopefully that will die away but if it spreads to other countries then it seems to me that the easiest way to remain a non-priority for bureaucracy is being and EU flagged boat as well as an EU VAT paid one, in our case with EU passports too.

 

[Baggywrinkle]

We also had our boat in Croatia and VAT paid there - which meant briefly going onto their registration. But post 2020 I’m hearing very different things about Greece and then Spain with a concept I’d never heard before of “third country flag”.

Hopefully that will die away but if it spreads to other countries then it seems to me that the easiest way to remain a non-priority for bureaucracy is being and EU flagged boat as well as an EU VAT paid one, in our case with EU passports too.

I agree, for me unfortunately that would mean German registration and flag as in the EU we are officially Germans .... but I'm strangely attached to my Red Ensign ... and I always make my home port Campbeltown because the Western Isles were my cruising ground from my childhood. I never used their Croatian registration scheme though.

 

[Tranona]

We also had our boat in Croatia and VAT paid there - which meant briefly going onto their registration. But post 2020 I’m hearing very different things about Greece and then Spain with a concept I’d never heard before of “third country flag”.

Hopefully that will die away but if it spreads to other countries then it seems to me that the easiest way to remain a non-priority for bureaucracy is being and EU flagged boat as well as an EU VAT paid one, in our case with EU passports too.

Third country flag is nothing new. However what seems to have happened since Brexit is that some states particularly Greece, but also Croatia and Slovenia have conflated the flag of registration with VAT status where EU law and the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement do not do this. That is VAT status is not affected by flag of registration. A T2L is a fudge round this for some states, but for Greece the difficulty is that their local laws on Transit Logs treat third country registered boats differently and place restrictions on movements even though they may be EU VAT paid. This is in conflict with "free circulation" which EU VAT paid status gives. The CA is currently trying to resolve this with the Commission because as you can imagine it affects a lot of UK boat owners who chose to leave their UK registered boat in Greece on Brexit day.

 

[Hooligan]

Third country flag is nothing new. However what seems to have happened since Brexit is that some states particularly Greece, but also Croatia and Slovenia have conflated the flag of registration with VAT status where EU law and the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement do not do this. That is VAT status is not affected by flag of registration. A T2L is a fudge round this for some states, but for Greece the difficulty is that their local laws on Transit Logs treat third country registered boats differently and place restrictions on movements even though they may be EU VAT paid. This is in conflict with "free circulation" which EU VAT paid status gives. The CA is currently trying to resolve this with the Commission because as you can imagine it affects a lot of UK boat owners who chose to leave their UK registered boat in Greece on Brexit day.

I may be wrong but I believe that if your U.K. registered boat was in Greece on Brexit day then you do not need a TL. The whole TL issue is a messy one but even the RYA website says this and I checked with a reputable agent in Greece. The issue is if you brought it to Greece post Brexit. It’s a mess and as you say frankly illegal under EU laws

 

[nortada]

Years on, good to see the T2L is still doing the rounds.

For British flagged vessels a total mirage but could be generated with very little effort. Even post Brexit, with a bit of imagination, given an original, I suspect a T2L could still be generated from ‘local resources’.

The great thing about the HMRC issued T2L had no legitimate data trail so it was/is impossible to challenge the legitimacy of the document.

Potential for a nice little cottage industry.