I haven't ruled that out yet, but I wouldn't save much after the taxes payable in Ireland. The way it works is you pay the ex VAT price in UK, then you pay VAT (at the Irish rate, 21.5%) on the Euro equivalent of whatever you paid the UK dealer. Then you have to pay VRT (vehicle registration tax - an extra tax on all cars sold or brought into Ireland). The VRT rate depends on the emissions level of a car. For the 1.4 it's 20% (28% for the 2.0TSI). So you pay 20% of the Irish retail price of the car (it's also payable on any extras).albertz33 wrote:why dont you import one?jphealy wrote:For anyone in the UK who's trying to "look on the bright side", consider this: At the moment, I'm going to have to wait about a year before I can afford to order a 1.4 TSI 160PS, whereas if I lived in the UK, I could have a fully loaded 2.0TSI GT by now. That's the difference in a nutshell.
Sorry this has nothing to do with the black roof lining!
So it work out like this: Nicely specced 1.4 ex VAT for about £18,500. That's about €20,800. VAT on that at 21.5% is €4,472. VRT comes to about €6,500. Add these up and you get €31,772 (£28,300). So the saving from buying in UK and importing is about €3k or so, depending on the exchange rate you get at the time.
I'm not sure if it's worth the hassle. I'd have to sell my current car privately, as a UK dealer wouldn't take it as a trade in. Selling used cars at the moment is a nightmare - I might end up getting next to nothing for it.
So even if I do go down the road of importing, I still can't afford to do it for a while.
