Vat

[Fk prestige]

Hi I have my boat in Sardinia purchased it new in 2021 tax free . At the moment I have to exit the EU every 18months and then get a return certificate to EU for another 18months .
I am thinking about paying VAT as I intend to stay within EU .
Has anyone had experience of paying VAT on a used boat ?I assume it has to be valued how do they go about that and are there better places to get valuation ?
Thank you

 

[Tranona]

VAT is paid on the value of the boat at the time of entry. There are different methods of calculating this value see the UK guidance here www.gov.uk/guidance/prepare-to-work-out-the-customs-value-of-your-imported-goods The same principles apply in the EU so you will need to talk to local customs as to which method they will use - or better still employ a customs agent to negotiate the best deal for you. Inevitably valuations will vary from state to state, but most will try to maximise the value and therefore the tax payable. at one time Malta and the Azores had a reputation for being generous but not sure that is still the case.

 

[jfm]

I did this last year, at the Cannes French customs office. I used an agent to interact with the office, and I got a letter from a local broker suggesting the value, which was in the £150k zone. The customs officials were very reasonable about it and accepted the broker's recommended price, which I thought was nicely at the low end of the applicable range.

This represents "method 6" in UK principles. In practice I would ignore the UK material that Tranona links to, because for a used boat that hasn't changed ownership it seems to be the case that European customs officials use either look up tables for depreciation (eg spain) or a best guess/broker opinion of market value (France). YMMV.