Car import tax to Finland/Buying Audi in Finland

[Nj]

Lads, can any of you tell me what kind of money i'd be likely to pay to import my A4 to Finland? I think I can drive it for a year after entering the country before I have to register it and pay import tax is that right?

The alternative is.. how much is a B6 A4 avant (even a cheaper model) likely to cost me in Finland? I'm told it would be cheaper to buy one near Helsinki because prices increase as you go north.

There's a strong possibility we'll be moving to Kajaani to stay with my wife's parents in autumn for a while until I get work (or give up and come home again if I can't find work). I'll probably do a TESOL qualification before I go in the hope that I could get bits of work teaching advanced English [British lads insert comments about first learning English myself here ]

cheers
nj

[ifa]

http://www.nettiauto.com/?sitelang=1

If that helps little bit.

[Nj]

Thanks Ifa, that gives me a good idea about buying a car there if I have to. The current exchange rate makes the prices a lot scarier.

[repo]

I don't think You need to pay tax, if You have owned the car long enough, and when You bring it with You, when You move in. You just are not allowed to sell it here until it's been between Finnish plates for another year.

If You plan to earn something by selling the car when the time has passed, get a LHD one. RHD is barely worth it's parts here.

At least for a Finn it works like that. I could move to UK for a year, and buy a car from wherever, own it abroad long enough, and when I move back to finland, and bring the car with me, it would be taxfree. Same restriction with selling of the car, though.

[Henkjan]

you should be able to import your car into Finland, provided you own it for iirc 6 months, might be be 12, without having to pay any tax.

[Henkjan]

http://www.tulli.fi/en/02_Publicatio...08_2008_en.pdf

[Nj]

thanks lads, that's really good info.

repo - ideally i'd like an LHD car straight away but practically I wouldn't be able to afford a similar car in LHD if I was buying it there. So I guess i'll drive my own RHD car for a while and once I have a job i'll look at buying an LHD one. I wouldn't be planning on making a profit by selling it in Finland so I guess I might have to bring it back to Britain and sell it here. Or keep it and get myself some advanced Finnish driving instruction so I can race it through the forests

[niall1]

you should be able to import your car into Finland, provided you own it for iirc 6 months, might be be 12, without having to pay any tax.

You would have thought so but I have a 2001 Land Rover Discovery I can't sell here in Ireland so I was thinking of bringing it to our summer Koti in Finland. When I corresponded with someone from tulli she said I'd have to pay 20k€ plus VAT on a 6k€ car!!

[Nj]

that's weird. the data sheet that Henkjan included suggests you'd not pay much. So I got on to my father in law, who went in today to customs and they said the same thing.
Maybe it's because I intend to live there but it would just be your summer vehicle and you wouldn't be residing in Finland permanently??
Where's your summer house by the way?

cheers
Noel

[niall1]

That's a bit of a balls.. Probably means I'll have to take the car out ot the country every six months!

House is in Espoo. So not a true summer house in the Finnish sence but next door to the inlaws so everyone's happy..

[Henkjan]

You would have thought so but I have a 2001 Land Rover Discovery I can't sell here in Ireland so I was thinking of bringing it to our summer Koti in Finland. When I corresponded with someone from tulli she said I'd have to pay 20k€ plus VAT on a 6k€ car!!

as long as the persons driving the car do not live permanently in Finland, you can have it on Irish plates (so your inlaws cannot use it then). problem then is how to get it MOT-ed. I had the same issue, we go to Inari once or twice a year (my wife is from there) and I was fed up with paying a lot for a lousy rent-astra, and especially in the winter I want a quattro! first I thought of bringing my coupé quattro there, but the MOT part stopped me. so I ended up buying a typ85 80quattro on Finnish plates which is parked in a friend's shed.

@fourcircle: Kajaani is not far (for Finnish standards that is, in Holland it would be considered very far ) from where my mother in law lives (Kuhmo). does your wife already have a job in Kajaani? I ask because I would expect it a lot easier to find a job in e.g. Oulu than in Kajaani (that's why my brother in law moved to Oulu)

[niall1]

as long as the persons driving the car do not live permanently in Finland, you can have it on Irish plates (so your inlaws cannot use it then).

Thanks. I received a reply from a more senior person in Tulli today and she explained that I can use the car there for 6 months of the year and not have to register it. If I want to continue to store the car in Finland then I have to hand my plates into the local customs office and collect them again the following summer. Not too bad I suppose just a pain that they don't have any allowances for non permanent residents..

@fourcircle
Why don't you pick up a LHD car in the UK and bring it with you? Second hand cars keep their value quite well over there due to the high import taxes.

[Nj]

@fourcircle: Kajaani is not far (for Finnish standards that is, in Holland it would be considered very far ) from where my mother in law lives (Kuhmo). does your wife already have a job in Kajaani? I ask because I would expect it a lot easier to find a job in e.g. Oulu than in Kajaani (that's why my brother in law moved to Oulu)

My wife doesn't have a job yet either but we're not sure when she will want to go back to work after having the second baby (end of May). Her dad has a timber business that she could probably help to expand from anywhere. We both studied in Oulu so ideally i'd like to get work there so we can live in the area. It's good for the airport of course.
Kajaani's only a temporary stop when we arrive since her parents live there and have offered to give us the top half of their house for as long as we need it.

distance is, of course, measured in different terms in Finland. In Scotland what i'd call a large distance would be "round the corner" in Finland.

[Nj]

@fourcircle
Why don't you pick up a LHD car in the UK and bring it with you? Second hand cars keep their value quite well over there due to the high import taxes.

That's a really good idea. I was thinking about it but i really don't want to give up my A4. It's taken me years to build up to this car and now i'm going to be in a country where the steering wheel's on the wrong side of the road! doh!

[Henkjan]

My wife doesn't have a job yet either but we're not sure when she will want to go back to work after having the second baby (end of May).

OK, äitiysloma first then... would be very untyppical in Finland, a stay-home mom... (btw: puhutko suomea?)

We lived in Oulu as well, for some 3½ years