VAT & Import Duty help.

[Tranona]

I just had a 38 ft twin engined us boat CE marked by CEProof & it cost me around 10% of the above qouted figure for inspection & traveling expences flights etc for the surveyor including build plate owners manual & all neccessary documentation from the third party european notified body

the upgrades amounted to 2 fuel shut offs & a manual bilge pump + a few lables etc cost about £100 and an afternoons work I wouldnt worry too much about the rcd as it realy is easy nowadays as so many boats have been done & the experts know how & what to do to make a boat comply

obviously yours will cost a little more due to the further distance but nowhere near the above figure

Id speak to CEproof for a qoute

We used to import a lot of vehicles & while customs do occasionaly ask to look at the item being imported they rarely looked at ours & we routinely submitted a low value purchase invoice

but we were importing into the uk of course

ken

It depends on the documentation available. The engine needs a CE mark, so if does not have a certificate of compliance it will need testing or replacing. If it is being certified to anything more than Cat D stability calculations will be necessary. These may of course be available from the designer or builder. Other equipment will also need evidence of CE compliance.

If all this information and documentation is available then your figure is reasonable. If not then the "up to" figure I quoted is realistic. To get an estimate of cost requires much more information than the OP has provided.

 

[jonic]

It depends on the documentation available. The engine needs a CE mark, so if does not have a certificate of compliance it will need testing or replacing. If it is being certified to anything more than Cat D stability calculations will be necessary. These may of course be available from the designer or builder. Other equipment will also need evidence of CE compliance.

If all this information and documentation is available then your figure is reasonable. If not then the "up to" figure I quoted is realistic. To get an estimate of cost requires much more information than the OP has provided.

Tranona is correct.

 

[macd]

Sorry - your dates are wrong - CE marking is 1998 and VAT (in the UK) is 1973. The 1985 reference is a very common misconception based on an "amnesty-with-strings-attached" clause.

In practice the strings, as I'm sure you know, are few, although charles_reed's post misses one of the fundamental ones in his point 3:
Certain vessels that were in use as private pleasure craft prior to 1 January 1985 and were in the EU on 31 December 1992, may be deemed VAT paid under the Single Market transitional arrangements. As Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU later, the relevant dates for vessels in these countries are ‘in use’ before 1 January 1987 and moored in EU on 31 December 1994. (HMRC: "Sailing your pleasurecraft to and from the United Kingdom".)

 

[Tranona]

1. CE is a mandatory conformation imposed on builders.
2. If the boat was built before 1993 it has none and doesn't need one.
3. If the boat has an SSR registration, and it was in the EC before 1985 , no VAT is due.

It is impossible to give any opinion without knowing the build-date, but the safest way is to write to HM Customs and Excise and get a letter confirming no VAT is due.
The CE is a red herring if the boat is pre-1993.
If VAT is due it would be on the price at which the boat last changed hands at the rate levied in the country in which it changed hands.

Registration is irrelevant to VAT in this context. The OP has already said the boat was built in 2003 and arrived in Portugal in 2008 so it is liable for VAT and needs to meet the RCD - both of which would apply irrespsective of the date it was built. VAT is based on market value, which may well be the purchase price if recent. However alternatives can be used, for example if substantial enhancement work had been done since purchase, the value may be higher, or alternatively if the boat has had significant use between the time it was purchased and the time it was imported it would be reasonable to negotiate a lower value.