Importing Greek licensed car for half year with permit L

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
1

Greetins everyone,

My car is a hyundai i30, bought new in June 2024. The car is (family) company owned, i am legally part of the company as i do work there too. I got a temporary job offer in Switzerland lasting around 5 months for the upcoming winter. Since we are a couple plus a dog, logistics wise coming with a car from Greece is a good solution. I messaged the Swiss customs and i got a reply saying literally stating : Your case is tricky, please come at the customs office at the border at working hours.

Has anyone ever brought a company owned car to work in Switzerland for 5-6 months?
I do not like the option of doing this journey and being told to park the car in Italy while taking our baggage from there up to the place my work will be. In that case i do prefer to use the airplane option.

The papers i do and can acquire :
1)My Greek drivers license 3+years
2)Valid car insurance with green card
3) vehicle registration
4) I can get a letter authorization from the company stating that i am permitted to fully drive the car both in Greece and outside Greece.
5) Car with services up to date and winter tires

I would be glad if anyone could offer a opinion. I have read somewhere about form 15.30?

With kind regards,
Viktor

2

As you’ve been told, it’s complicated.

The short version:
once you are a Swiss resident, to drive a EU registered car that you own - you need to import it. This means paying taxes to import it. There have been cases where people were fined tens of thousands of francs for borrowing their father’s van and drove over the border.

There are exceptions - if you don’t own the car, and the car’s owner is in the vehicle (i.e. you are just helping them drive), then you can drive it.

The fact that the car is owned by a company complicates things, as they would need to import it (not you); and then also declare your having the car’s use (also for personal driving) as a taxable benefit.

I also believe that if you are employed by 2x companies, you need to declare this, as there is something about not exceeding the overtime/ubertime allowances over the two employers - but here I have very little information.

I don’t know how it works for a car not owned by yourself, but by a company - but for a car I owned, 8ish years ago, I started the import process. It’s 25chf to start it. You then have 12 months to do the Swiss MFK (safety test), pay taxes, etc… after 10 months, I returned the car to UK and cancelled the import… Not sure if this loophole still exists.

Might be easier to rent a car in Switzerland for the few months otherwise.

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3

Are you going to drive it to Switzerland and then drive it back, or will it be used while you are in Switzerland?

I think you can do it as a temporary import but you need to go through the paperwork and I’m not sure what is involved.

4

A foreign owned company car may be used by a Swiss resident, however only on company business, not for pleasure.

I think it’s in this document but don’t have time to find it.
https://www.wcoomd.org/en/about-us/legal-instruments/~/media/2D53E23AA1A64EF68B9AC708C6281DC8.ashx

5

This is from summer 2013, but the circumstances were pretty similar:

I was already a year into my residence in Switzerland (B permit, studying and working at the time).
I brought a car from Greece, that was a company car (family business), and I was on the board but not an employee.

At the border in Chiasso I stopped and got the 18.44 form.
I then talked to the customs office in Zurich, and they were actually quite helpful.
I gave them the following documents:

  1. a letter from the CEO and legal representative of the company stating that the company registered car was regularly used by me. That proved it was part of my personal effects, so I could import it for free.
  2. an excerpt from the government gazette (ΦΕΚ) where it shows that was part of the board of the company, to prove my connection to the company

I managed to get the car imported like this for a nominal amount, and then took the 13.20 form so that I could go to the STVA (the respective “μηχανολογικό”). There, I presented the 18.44 form as proof of importation, and took an appointment for an MFK (the respective “KTEO”).

This is a more detailed inspection than the regular one, and I had to also provide the Certificate of Conformity (CoC) for the car. This you can either get from the importer of the car in Greece (you can talk to a dealer and they will direct you), or you could also find an online service.

When the inspection was done, I just walked to the counter, and they gave me the grey card and plates and that was it.

It was a stressful month as I was new, a broke student, and I was always hearing horror stories abou the vehicle inspections, but all went well in the end.

If you only stay for a few months, I don’t think you should do anything for the car. In my first year I had a GR registered car, and I drove it all the time without issue, even during stops at the border or at police controls. Every time showed my B permit, I explained the car is only temporary and had the ferry tickets to show when it first travelled, so never had any problem. Maybe you can do the 18.44 only, but never actually go through with the process of importation.

I have a friend that for the past 10 months or so has been driving a Romanian registered car, also without issue as it’s here temporarily and she’s driving it back in a couple of weeks.

If you are going to stay here for longer and you want to keep the car, then by all means import it. But I think you have some time to decide, and you don’t need to do it immediately. Since it’s a company car, I would ask the legal representative of the company in Greece to sign a paper saying that the company is authorising you to personally use the car for a period of 6 months, so that you can justify personal use, in case someone asks.

If you’re employed or not by the current company is kind of irrelevant to the matter, unless you need to prove the connection so that you can import for free (as I did 12 years ago).

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6

You don’t own the car, your company is not operating in Switzerland and the vehicle is not being used for the business of the company… Not a chance.

And be very careful what you say to the authorities as you could implicate yourself in fraud.

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