9060 Bringing our cars to Italy - what do we pay?

We are planning to move to Italy on a permanent basis. In some countries, such as Denmark or Holland, even bringing a car you have owned for years into the new country, will make you liable for special sales taxes that are imposed by the Danes and the Dutch on new cars. We cannot find anything on specific Italian rules in this connection. If we want to bring a 10 year old Saab from Germany to Italy, do we suddenly have to face a bill from the tax authorities? Or are our cars just considered to be our property that is not further taxed upon entering Italy?

Category
Legal

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 03/15/2008 - 13:21

I am assuming you are Briitish, or at least EC.
To bring your (UK Reg) car into Italy is fine, and you can entirely legally drive it on UK plates for 6 months. In practice, you can generally get away with it for a number of years, so long as you keep it legal in the UK - taxed, insured MOT'd etc.)
If you want to put the car onto Italian plates, then there is a 'tax' on change of ownership - between 300 and 600 Euro. (I know the ownership isn't changing, but this tax applies).
I don't know how you will get on with a ten year old car as far as the inspection which the motorizzazione civile will make: apart from them asking for changes from the rhs specfication, and for a "scheda tecnica", they might start worrying about Euro pollution numbers.
You should be ready to present the original invoice for the car (in your name, the Italians do not accept that a regstration document proves ownership) and it must show that VAT was paid when you bought it.
A lot of these rules are pretty new, and I can't point you at an authoritative current source I'm afraid.
If you can't find any other information before you leave, just bring the cars and research it at the local motorizzazione office (or more easily delegate this task to a branch of ACI), because the local interpretations of the regulations will vary.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 03/15/2008 - 13:26

Thank you so much for your informative reply!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 03/15/2008 - 15:55

Our advice would be DON'T bother to change the plates to Italian ones, as it is already "an old car" it is hardly worth the expense, let alone the aggro. Initially we purchased a new 4x4 Lefthand drive car, to use mostly in Italy. English plates. As it was costing around £1000 to do the round trip to UK to get it MOT'd each year, we tried to re-register it in Italy. It proved to be a nightmare and even ACI didn't always know what to do!!! We gave up. Without mentioning any names, a great many English people who live permanently in Italy use their English registered cars here for years on end. I wonder if they are MOT'd etc. Germans do the same. We simply sold our English reg. car to a left hand drive, dealer in Essex and bought the same make of car here in Italy. Note. European Non residents can purchase cars in Italy now.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 03/15/2008 - 16:32

We bought a car last year in Italy.
We had to consider a lot of issues when we bought the car. First of all, we did not want an expensive car. All we needed was a car that was (sort of) reliable and we bought a Fiat Bravo. It was ten years old, and the price was negotiated down to € 900.- The insurance was € 1000,- road tax € 230,-. Total sum first year € 2130,- Next year we pay only road tax and MOT. The year after, only road tax and MOT. Insurance, we pay again when we have "used up" the twelve months that we have paid for. The cost of MOT, we do not know, but I guess that the amount will be reasonable, lets say € 200 annually.
The insurance company demands that we return all the cars papers to them each time we leave Italy. Not only the vignette, but also the documents that follows the vignette. This means that the car is not insured against theft when we are away. This is the main reason why we bought a cheap car.
In September 2007, we had theft on our property. The roof of our new garage was stolen! But the car was left unharmed. I guess that driving around in an old car with no insurance vignette is a sure way to be stopped by the police.
One drawback is that we don't have a car when we arrive in Brindisi. But we have a good friend that pick us up and drive us to our home. He also has been given a power of attorney with the insurance company so he returns and fetch the documents for the car each time we go to Puglia. Without him, the solution that we have chosen would be more difficult and expensive. He was also helping us finding a car that suited us, we sat in Norway and when he found a car, we just transferred the money.

This is the gist of what I wrote in an earlyer post.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/16/2008 - 08:05

[quote=Noble;85430]Our advice would be DON'T bother to change the plates to Italian ones, as it is already "an old car" it is hardly worth the expense, let alone the aggro. Initially we purchased a new 4x4 Lefthand drive car, to use mostly in Italy. English plates. As it was costing around £1000 to do the round trip to UK to get it MOT'd each year, we tried to re-register it in Italy. It proved to be a nightmare and even ACI didn't always know what to do!!! We gave up. Without mentioning any names, a great many English people who live permanently in Italy use their English registered cars here for years on end. I wonder if they are MOT'd etc. Germans do the same. We simply sold our English reg. car to a left hand drive, dealer in Essex and bought the same make of car here in Italy. Note. European Non residents can purchase cars in Italy now.[/quote]
We brought our Citroen Xsara to Italy. RHD and about 7 years old at the time. DVLA gave us export documents for free, and we then re-registered the car here. No problems with the revisione or any other part of the process, apart from the cost here for the new registration. Car is now 10 years old and has had no problem with either of its MOT's here.
Worth it if you are going to be permanently resident here in my opinion.