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Hi Christopher,

OK, the flat rate of VRT only applies to larger vehicles and camper vans. For a Berlingo or similar, you’ll be paying the ‘car-derived’ rate, which is 13.3 per cent of the Irish market selling price, as defined by Revenue. You only have to pay VAT on a new, or nearly-new, vehicle, so if it’s more than six months old, with fewer than 6,000km on the clock, then you won’t have to pay VAT.

Mind you, this is being written in early October, so if Brexit actually does happen on the 31st of this month, all bets could be off.

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Hi Joe,

Generally speaking, most finance providers will ask for some sort of proof of employment (or at least imminent employment) and without that you might struggle. You’d probably be better off talking to your bank manager or your credit union rather than trying to get anything out of a finance provider. 

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Hi Philip,

Yes you’re right — the T8’s acceleration is a combination of the engine and the electric motor working in concert. When you run the battery down in electric-only mode, it will always keep a minimal charge on board, so that the car can then function in hybrid mode. If you use maximum acceleration repeatedly and in quick succession, you might well reach a point where the battery cries enough, but it will have charged up again — from both the engine and the regenerative braking system — to go again within a few minutes. 

Wall chargers generally cost around €900 to €1,000 fully installed, but there’s a grant from the Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland available that will cover up to €600 of that.

Finally, you’re absolutely right — a V60 only gives away a 31-litre advantage to the larger V90 when it comes to boot space.

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Hi Keiron,

The short version is we simply don’t know. Until the UK government and parliament gets its act together and either exits with a deal, or crashes out with no deal, then everything is both on and off the table. In general, it’s assumed that the UK will continue to shadow most EU regulations in the immediate period after Brexit, which might suggest that VAT and customs duty won’t apply, and it’s unlikely that VAT would be charged in any case on a second hand car that’s more than six months old. That said, the Irish Government may take a view that, if there is no deal, it may have to protect the Irish market from the ‘dumping’ of cheap imports and may apply taxes or restrictions accordingly. The short version, I’m afraid, is that we still simply don’t know, and — given the current turmoil in UK politics — probably won’t for some time. 

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Hi Katie,

OK, it’s only a rough calculation, but assuming that it’s a Civic VTEC Turbo 1.5 Sport, we reckon that’ll cost you around €2,600 in VRT. 

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Hi there,

We can usually only guess at what Revenue will charge in terms of VRT (and it’s dependent on equipment levels, of course, as well), but we’d take a guess at a VRT cost of around €6,900 on that one.

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Hi Shane,

Yes you can — anyone can buy a commercial vehicle and tax it as a commercial, but the restriction is on use. If you’re using it for personal use (i.e: literally anything other than going to and from work, or transporting items for work), then you really ought to register it as a private car and tax it accordingly. It's a major fine if you’re caught displaying incorrect tax.

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Hi Muhammad,

It’s a rough guess (you can never quite tell which way Revenue is going to go with some cars), but I’d say you’ll pay between €900 and €1,000 VRT on that.

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Hi Sarah,

Yes, absolutely. The only issues you will face will be in either convincing your existing finance provider to continue accepting payments from Ireland (that shouldn’t be a problem but check with your provider first) or, alternatively, finding an Irish finance provider to take on the balance of the loan (that would probably be trickier given that you likely won’t have any credit history in Ireland yet). The only other issue would be if you want to sell the car on again before you’re finished paying off the finance, but that’s possibly an issue for the future. 

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Hi Kevin,

That is a good question. And by good, I mean we haven’t a chance of being able to answer it. There are literally no Alpine A110s for sale in Ireland right now (and more’s the pity) so it’s a total guess as to what Revenue will say it’s worth. I would imagine that, for a year-old version, they’ll take the UK price, add VRT, and then knock off around 15-20 per cent for depreciation (although the Alpine’s desirability may mean that they try and claim that there is no depreciation…). That would suggest a total value of around  the €55,000 mark, but again, as I say, that’s a total guess.