Hi, I found a very good value Porsche Cayenne www.autoscout.de which happens to be an import into Germany from the US (was recently imported to Germany and has not been sold since its import). It was produced like all Cayennes in Eastern Europe and the dealer in Essen tells me that it has all of its German passport papers etc and has been modified by Porsche back to km/hr rather than miles. They are happy to prepare the export papers etc but when I asked them whether the invoice will show the MWST, the dealer said that it would not as it is a "re-import". If I need to pay Swiss VAT + customs duties (c.12%) at the border but am not able to claim the German MWST (19%), the car starts to look like more of a bother than it is worth. I've trawled numerous of the threads on this website but cannot find any that deal with this issue. The car is from July 2014 and is the same spec as all of the same cars on the market in Switzerland so I am otherwise expecting it to not have too many issues when it gets it's inspection at the Strassenverkehrsamt. Anyone have any experience with this at all and with the MWST issue? Thanks!
There is no MWST to reclaim on a used vehicle, as it is not charged, not even here, but you will have to pay it to the Swiss upon import.
Tom
Tom thanks for your response. However I have already imported 2 other cars from Germany into Switzerland and was able to reclaim the MWST back on both occasions. I think there may be a difference perhaps when the car is bought privately compared to from a dealer. That said, in this instance I am buying from a dealer as I did the previous two times so there shouldn't be a difference.
And the other cars were used as well?
Tom
Yes they were.
If the car dealer charges you no VAT (because it is sold on behalf of a costumer) you van get no VAT refund.
If the car dealer charges you VAT, the car dealer may refund it after export if he wishes to do.
Problem from the car dealers point of view: He is ultimately liable for VAT. If he did something wrong and erroneoulsy refunded VAT he still has to pay it.
I also think if he charges VAT it should be not different from any other cars sale. But maybe there is somthing deep buried within the German tax law which says other wise, or at least the dealer or his tax advisor thinks there is.
That's very helpful. I subsequently spoke to a representative at Autociel which gave me the advice that the car if purchased by the dealer was registered in the name of a person rather than a business, then that would be the other reason as to why they would not break out the MWST from the Brutto amount. Either way, the car should be viewed as being purchase price + 12% (Swiss costs) rather than cost -19%+12% so not such a good deal after all. Shame. Thanks to all for the help here though.
Possibly why it is priced as it is???
Also, you don't get 19% back, you get 16% back (100-100/1.19%).
Tom
This is correct. You may find a similar used car previously owned by a (VAT registered) business. In that case you would pay the purchase price (which is excluding VAT) plus the Swiss VAT plus 4%. You still are liable for the Swiss VAT at import of course.
The VAT status is determined when the car is bought new. It gets either VAT status as a VAT registered business buys it or not in case a private person buys it.