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Hi Frank,

The bad news here is that a 1966 Mustang probably has CO₂ emissions similar to that of a medium-sized coal-fired power station. The good news, though, is that for any car that’s more than 30 years old, you pay a flat-fee VRT charge of just €200. Big sigh of relief all round, I expect. There are some other charges that you’ll have to pay, though, as the car is coming in from outside the EU. You’ll have to pay VAT and customs duty, but thankfully these are calculated on the actual price paid for the car, not the Revenue-calculated OMSP price, which makes things much more straightforward. Customs duty works out at ten per cent of the purchase price, and then VAT will be 23 per cent of the purchase price plus the shipping cost. 

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Hi Martina,

When you say ‘changing’ do you mean trading-in, or having your existing van converted? If you’re trading in, then we’d have to know the make and model of the van you’re interested in buying to tell you the VRT charge. If you’re converting your existing van to a crew cab, then there’s no change unless you decide to tax it as a private vehicle. Keep it as a commercial and you’ll pay the same €333 in annual motor tax.

If you want to change it to private vehicle tax (so that you can use it for anything other than strictly work use) then, assuming it’s the 1.9 dCi engine, it’ll cost you €673 in annual motor tax. There’s no VRT charge if you already own the vehicle — that only applies to new purchases or to vehicles being imported for the first time. 

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Hi Shane,

No, not just yet. The new NOx tax (which could add a significant amount of extra cost to importing a car, especially an older one like that 2014 Focus) won’t take effect until the New Year. It will be applied to all new cars and imports from Jan 1st. 

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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 David,

We don’t know yet as the car hasn’t been launched on the Irish market, but we can hazard a guess at around €32-33,000, net of VRT rebates and the SEAI grant.

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Hi Andrew,

That’s a tricky one as you’ve not told us the precise cars in question. The thing is, an electric car with a price of €30,000 has probably already had the VRT rebated on it, so you won’t make as big a saving — you’ll only save the VAT, which will represent a discount of around €5,000, bringing the price down to around €25,000. 

With the hybrid, assuming it has CO₂ emissions of under 100g/km, and therefore is in the 15 per cent VRT band, you could make a huge saving. It’s a rough guess, but we reckon you’d save €4,000 worth of VAT and €3,000 worth of VRT, bringing the price down to €17,000. 

Now, these are just rough calculations, and the final, proper figures may differ, but on the face of it the hybrid model offers a better up-front saving, but then you have to work in the potential for much cheaper running costs with an electric car when it comes to fuel and servicing. 

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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 Con,

You can, and the good news is that you’ll get a €5,000 rebate on the cost of the VRT. The bad news is that you’ll still have to pay VAT if the car is less than six months old. The worse news is that you might struggle to find a Model 3 to import at all — there’s a big waiting list for them and second hand examples are thin on the ground.

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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.