The BBs

Has anyone got any recent experience of costs in shipping and taxation liability for a three year old luxury car to Australia?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Best regards,

The BBs

The Bloke

For starters, "Luxury" will most likely send your import duties through the roof, more than a normal car, as luxury goods a usually taxed heavier. The general concensus is that if the car is not something special, ie a collector item or something really unique, etc, most buy here to save the hassle of import tax, registration and compliance modifications, spare parts availability etc.

The BBs

Hi, The Bloke,

From what I can gather any vehicle worth over $55134 is classified as a luxury car in Australia unless that information is incorrect?

It appears that the import duty is based on what I paid for the car when new which seems a bit silly as it must have devalued over time and be worth less now!

As my car was bought new three years ago wouldn’t the import value be commensurately lower than the original price paid?

The BBs

NikiL

I don't know about the way import duty is calculated, but with company cars the taxation is based on the list price of a car, not the current value - it may well be import duty to Aus is the same. They have to have a standard value to work with, and the list price is easiest.

Timber Floor Au

Someone did a post on this a few years ago, and actually quoted the import duty scales.

The basis as I remember is.

1. car must be pre owned by you for 12 months immediately preceeding export / import of vehicle.
2. depreciation is taken into affect.
3. it will always be classed as an import, so its value to the aussie market is also very low.

Im really not sure of the tax implications, based on the above. Perhaps, email Karman Shipping, in the UK. We used them to export our car.

Ste

Wendy

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...ght=car+import

The Bloke

If in doubt contact Australian Customs Service www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=4491

or read this
www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c=2348 and this
www.customs.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=5351

The Bloke

Very good post by BigApe.

bigAPE

Thanks mate

As mentioned in another recent post about this. The original article I wrote is a little old now (last year) but the figures are correct to my knowledge and it is specific to Victoria. The updated version of it with a full table of costs is on another forums Wiki. PM me for the link which will just be removed if I post it here

I created this article to banish once and for all the myth offered as advice from various expert posters on this and other forums, which was almost always incorrect.

In answer to the questions in this thread, the import duty is not based on purchase value of the car. The import duty is based on the "as landed" value of the vehicle when it hits the docks in Australia. This includes the authorised valuation of the car minus the shipping costs, insurance, etc plus GST and other fees. You can apply for an authorised valuation from the state you plan to ship to in advance simply by providing the accredited valuation agent with the cars specific details and photographic evidence. This valuation is for Import Duty purposes and will likely be only 60-70% of the average second hand resale value in Australia. The import duty is only one of the costs involved though, don't forget to take into account all the rest.

From my experience it is not worth the cost and effort to import your own car. It is generally better to sell in the UK and buy the same marque over here. At best, you will break even or most likely lose a little in the process

There is an Excel spreadsheet (with instructions) which I created to assist people in figuring out a really close estimate of the costs specific to them. Perhaps that will help

The BBs

Hello bigAPE,

Thanks for your feed back and most excellent Excel spreadsheet which I found on one of your previous posts. You certainly spent time doing that didn’t you?

I had difficulty in finding my exact car model as it appears that they don’t do the same engine size as here in the UK so I decided to base it on a higher spec saloon version. Ours is a tourer.

I understand that your car is an Audi TT which to my mind is a luxury car, so did you not have to pay the Luxury Car Tax? I don’t recall seeing it in your calculations? Or is the LCT calculation based purely on the import value of the car?

Based on your calculations it looks as though £11000 is a realistic import charge for our car shipping it in a container but does not take the LCT thingy into consideration. Our car would be worth over the $55134 which I read somewhere is the cut off point for the LCT charge so I would need to re-calculate that and add it to the final costs! Cripes!!!

Sorry to hear of your bad experience with the shipping of your car. I know is it more expensive but I think I would only ever consider shipping in a container to be on the safe side. I assume your car was below deck and not above exposed to all weathers?

We have friends that immigrated to New Zealand some years ago and they put their brand new Mitsubishi Shogun in a container and the shipping company (in their wisdom) supported the sides of the car with polystyrene or something similar to stop it moving and hitting the container walls!!! Needless to say when their car arrived it had to be repainted as with the rolling movement of the ship it rubbed all the pain off the sides beautifully! Ouch!

Thanks a million again for your kind input big APE,

Best regards,

The BBs.

bigAPE

You're very welcome

The damage sustained to our car in transit was not accidental. The twats on the ship/dock ripped off the badges using a screwdriver and put a ball-pin dent in the passenger side door. Putting it in a container does guarantee there will be no minor issues, but the damage to my car has been resolved and didn't exceed the difference of £1,000.

Oddly I just posted about LCT on imports in another thread, so I will copy my comments from there is that's alright

You are liable for Luxury Car Tax if the as landed value of the vehicle + customs duty + GST is greater than ~$57,000. You will be charged 25% on the value that exceeds that amount. As the authorised valuations are generally ~60% of the second hand road value in Australia, even when you add on customs duty, then it would have to be a really expensive car.

Say the cars total value including import duty and other charges was $63,000 you would be charged LCT of 25% on the $6,000 above the threshold. So the LCT payable would be $1500 (£690).

Katehn

Thank you for all the time an effort you put into your spreadsheet. It has been really helpful to us as we have not been able to decide what to do with our 2 cars ( we are very attached to them but were not sure if it was worth taking or not). Kate

MisterTwo

I wouldn't consider importing a vehicle which didn't have a direct model available in Australia - especially if it is a different body shape, because as soon as you have an accident where a body panel needs to be replace then it will be written off. Even if the engine size isn't available. I was goig to import my Honda Accord 2.0 Coupe but they didn't do the Coupe version in Australia and they didn't do the 2.0 engine.