VRT - can you disagree with the OMSP

If VRT was abolished then you could go to the UK and get a Corolla for less that €15K Irish. That's a Corolla for the price of a Yaris.
More deals can be found at [broken link removed]

Who wins?
Irish consumers

Who looses?
Irish government and Irish dealers who have a closed market, set prices amongst themselves and are free from competition from outsiders.
 
mc-BigE said:
One way of getting the Irish Motor industry to stand up and help Joe soaps like you and me is to buy our cars in UK/Japan and import them ourselves (sorry Japnuts nothing personal).
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BTW Japnuts (Disclosure: I purchased a vehicle through Japnuts so will naturally be telling you I was genius for choosing to do it this way!, but have not other affiliation with them) run an 'custom import' service too, with which the margin is transparent (and reasonable IMO). It is of course possible to go direct to the people that the like of Japnuts ultimately deal with (and save the fees incurred in having an extra layer of intermediaries), but a key part of the service for me is dealing with the VRT aspect, lodging said appeals, going down to the docks to get the vehicle (and the to-and-froing of organising that), organising the fitting of an alarm and chasing people whose primary language is Japanese, together with the benefits of the trading relationships they've built up over time.

The other big thing is that before a car gets bought for you, you pretty much know the full end-cost (except for the impacts of exchange rate variations (which can potentially be large but in general are minor) and/or any rebates secured by the importer). And in the case of the other Japnuts customer where the VRT turned out higher than the initial quote, it was Japnuts who were having the sleepless nights about having to cover the difference if an appeal was to be unsuccessful.

The big difference between a random car on a forecourt in Ireland ready to go vs buying through such a custom import service is that you know the price that was paid at auction for the vehicle and the assessment grading it received (and that the dealer and/or his spouse hasnt been whacking it around for the last n months without servicing it while they were waiting to sell it, which was the case in one case). The quality of stuff sold as "fresh off the boat, first to see will buy" via Irish dealers for is for me an open question.

I personally would choose to use such a "custom import" service via Japnuts or anyone offering a similar service again, as opposed to going to a random agent in Japan who will their bit their side, stick it on a ship and leave you holding a vehicle which the VRT hasnt been settled on in the docks.
 
Dipole said:
If VRT was abolished then you could go to the UK and get a Corolla for less that €15K Irish. That's a Corolla for the price of a Yaris.
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Granted but overnight your car is worth between 22.5% and 30% less than you paid for it. Just because all other cars are 22.5% - 30% cheaper doesn't remove the fact that in real terms you're out of pocket by that percentage. The only way you won't be out of pocket is if you're a car FTB.

Abolishing VRT devalues the whole market. Or have I got this wrong?

I'm all in favour of VRT being scrapped as you will get better value for money, which is what it is all about.
 

You have a point regarding bringing in a Jap Import, its a lot of time and money in advance for a car you've seen on the computer screen, but there are Custom clearance agents who for a small fee, say 50 euro, will do the paperwork for you i.e. pay the CCT, VAT and can Get the vehicle inspected for VRT as well. Arrange to meet with you or your car transporter company. Its not rocket science.

When I refer to the Irish Motor Industry, I’m referring to the bigger "car manufacturing distributors" like the ones mentioned in primetime a few months back eligibly guilty of price fixing, those kind of Garages.
 
22.5 to 30% of an asset that in most circumstances you can't liquidate without immeadiately replacing it is worth next to nothing.
 
i still haven't paid the VRT on my sports car which i purchased 2months ago and in that time the VRT has trebled in cost!!!!

in the meantime i spent 1,000E on timing belt and service etc plus it needs another 500E to be spent.how can i reduce the cost of the VRT........
 

The point is you wouldn't need to go to the UK because it should be the same price here.

the irish consumers who have an existing car will loose also,but
if there trading in the price difference should be the same because the car there buying is cheaper.
 
50 euro, come on - there's very few services indeed you can get in the docks that take more than a few minutes such as this within that price range

It's like the difference between doing your own accounts and having a ggod accountant -- it's only adding up; not rocket science -- but I'll let my accountant add it up and fill in the forms instead of me taking 3 days making sure it's all done right and I'm not paying n thousand too much.

It's all very easy to say it's not rocket science, but it's still lots of time and chasing. For example there isn't a "your car transporter company" involved -- there's a single point of contact who takes care of it all, and you're talking 3-5% of the value of the vehicle (not sure exactly what it is, but I think it's at the lower end of that range), which is very reasonable indeed IMO. Have a re-read of my listing of the work carried out on tyour behalf, or read the full list up on the service description.

mc-BigE said:
When I refer to the Irish Motor Industry, I’m referring to the bigger "car manufacturing distributors" like the ones mentioned in primetime a few months back eligibly guilty of price fixing, those kind of Garages.
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I know what you mean, and I assume your comments are much more aimed at the case of importing a UK vehicle that you've purchased directly (and ideally test driven, had inspected and have spoken over the phone to the seller). It gets a lot more complicated from Japan because there is going to be a time difference, and there are not going to be replies in clear English with no misunderstandings within minutes to emails, phone calls, or to simply know where someone lives and feasibly be able to drop around to them.

In the case of bringing a car over from the UK, I agree, you don't need an itermediary and there's no major benefit to one - by far the biggest benefit you're going to get is from test driving and/or having someone worthwhile inspecting it.

mc-BigE said:
those kind of Garages.
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Remember, I'm talking here about the 'custom import service', where Japnuts (or anyone similar) is for a known fee getting a car you have total control over choosing and you know the raw cost that's being paid.

As opposed to garages, who get random stock from random sources (tradeins, auctions with no investigation of any consequence), tell you a random selection of things they reckon you want to hear, and offer some form of guarantee.

There's no 'garage' involved, the car doesn't sit on a forecourt Ireland for an indefinite period gathering moss and depreciating while waiting for someone to select it, and the margin is much smaller as the importer is not risking not being able to sell it for the proposed price (or having to stump up repair costs should anything go wrong which they'd have to if they gave say a 6 month guarantee on a vehicle from stock).
 
So is there any truth in the rumour that there's a case with the European Courts that may lead to VRT being abolished??
Anybody got any idea?
 
They may abolish it a midnight on a certain date only to be immediately replaced by a similar tax. And around in circles we will go again.
 
bond-007 said:
They may abolish it a midnight on a certain date only to be immediately replaced by a similar tax. And around in circles we will go again.
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Fine by me, abolish vrt and road tax and stick the lot on fuel would be a lot fairer all round.
 
bartelink said:
50 euro, come on - there's very few services indeed you can get in the docks that take more than a few minutes such as this within that price range
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The customs clearance agent charged my 30 pounds back in 2001, but this is only for his services i.e. doing the paperwork, paying the vat and Custom clearance tax on my behalf (which I have to pay for in turn)

Here's a link to that post:

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showpost.php?p=186761&postcount=16
 
mc-BigE said:
The customs clearance agent charged my 30 pounds back in 2001, but this is only for his services i.e. doing the paperwork, paying the vat and Custom clearance tax on my behalf (which I have to pay for in turn)
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Fair enough. Having that specific to-and-froing done for that price sounds quite decent (and now totally credible to me given your additional evidence!).

In my case, this cost and the car transporter cost was included in the Japnuts fee (which is obviously going to be more simply adding those up).

To sum up, the ancillary benefits over DIY are:
1) Multiple vendors on Japanese side
2) Established relationships with same mean less things can go wrong
3) Someone else arranges to have the time to go down during their opening hours, verifies the appointment and reschedules if the boat or anything else is delayed
4) Ditto alarm fitting, new tyres, timing belt fitting etc.
5) Ditto VRT payment (and all other component payments)
6) You know your costs up front (ref fact that if the VRT is wrong, thats a Japnuts issue as discussed in previous post)

As you're saying, all the steps are doable and no idnidvidual step is rocket science. DIY should generally work out cheaper (and be educational along the way). But for me, that's a set of work I get someone who specialises in just such services to do - I see it as a very good value service which got me the vehicle I wanted at an appropriate cost and have no complaints. Especially if they can be transparent and up-front about all the costs (as opposed to a car on a forecourt where you better have something to compare it against to ascertain whether it's good value).
 
VRT will never go! I paid 5k just recently. The amount I paid was as per the website that morning. One thing I did notice is that the OMSP of some car brands is way off, its much too low and therefore you can save 4-5k importing. I'm not going to say which ones! But BMW's get hit hard on the website. Probably just because its a popular car to import. There is no saving I could see importing. Next time your going to work look at all the UK regs around you...you'll be surprised.
 
Here's a funny example, i was looking resently at a 2000 Audi RS4 avant in the UK, there a very popular car in high demand in the UK and can fetch up to 25K sterling or more for one, however because of high road tax and insurance in ireland the OMSP valve is 10,000 euro ??? so vrt is about 3K euro, its great if you want one, but very bad for someone selling one in Ireland.

Hope the vrt office don't look at this forum!!!
 
I read an article in the car section of one of last Sundays papers - cannot remember which one as it was hanging around at work. It was about how 1% of people who import cars appeal the VRT as saying the OMSP is too high. Of them I think about 90% won the appeal. I'm just wondering how do you prove the OMSP is too high? I know this post is a bit old but someone said that a print off of CBG or the likes is not sufficient.
Any thoughts.
 
I won a VRT appeal on a Clio which meant the OMSP reduced from 11995 to 8750 (or something like that anyway) and I was refunded the difference.

I sent in the examples of the only two identical cars I could find which were on sale in Ireland at the time.

SSE
 
SSE what you sent in was it print offs from an internet site or newspaper adds? Thanks for that bit of info.
 
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