Help required from England!

[68SPRINT]

Hi everyone,

I am currently importing a '67 390 GTA fastback to England. The ship docks on Saturday and I can't wait to get it.

However, our nice customs & excise people have thrown a spanner in the works. For years we have had a rate of 5% import duty for cars over 30 years old. In the last few weeks they have tightened it up so only vintage, museum and extremely rare cars are considered for this 5% duty. This means I will now pay 10% import duty and a further 17.5% VAT tax. This is going to add around £1400 to the price of the car

Customs will consider my case if I can confirm how many '67 390 GTAs with a deluxe interior still exist. All I can confirm is mine is the only one registered with the owners club of GB, but this is not enough.

Do you guys have a US owners club? If so would they be willing to tell me how many of these cars they have registered?

Sorry for the longish thread but it could save me a lot of money!

Thanks
Darren

 

[Max Power]

You can get exact numbers from Kevin Marti at The Marti Report. He has a website that can be easily found through a web search.

 

[gp001]

In reading the title of the thread I thought you wanted the country of England to help you.

 

[6T6coupe]

Try posting the same at www.vintage-mustang.com. Someone there will know.

 

[WarrenC]

This site may help; www.1967mustang.com/
It's an S code registry for the 390 GTA. Lots of info there!
Good luck!
1967mustang.com

 

[jerry S]

How very odd

Hi everyone,

I am currently importing a '67 390 GTA fastback to England. The ship docks on Saturday and I can't wait to get it.

However, our nice customs & excise people have thrown a spanner in the works. For years we have had a rate of 5% import duty for cars over 30 years old. In the last few weeks they have tightened it up so only vintage, museum and extremely rare cars are considered for this 5% duty. This means I will now pay 10% import duty and a further 17.5% VAT tax. This is going to add around £1400 to the price of the car

Customs will consider my case if I can confirm how many '67 390 GTAs with a deluxe interior still exist. All I can confirm is mine is the only one registered with the owners club of GB, but this is not enough.

Do you guys have a US owners club? If so would they be willing to tell me how many of these cars they have registered?

Sorry for the longish thread but it could save me a lot of money!

Thanks
Darren

My car came from the US to the NL and I only had to pay a 6% duty and no VAT. You would think that with the common market being also a customs union, that things like duty rates would have been harmonized among the member states. In other words, the rules should be the same in each of the EU member states. I am suspicious. It would be like two Americans importing a car from the UK. One car goes through the port of New York and is dutied at 6% while the other goes through the port of Los Angeles and is dutied at 10% and then hit with state sales tax. It should not work that way.

I looked up the Taric code and found that your car (like mine) is imported under the following heading 87032390. The rate of duty is supposed to be 10%. Here in the NL, because my car is over 30 years old, it gets special treatment as a collectible antique and is dutied at 6% with no VAT or BPB (special car tax). Now the thing is I cannot find any provision for this in the annual published customs rates for the EU but whom am I to question 4% off?

It could be that the member states cannot collect in excess of the pubished rates but they might be able to collect less under certain circumstances. Maybe the UK had a special provision for collectables but amended the law or the law expired. I would suggest you make some phone calls first. Customs screws up all the time. I bought a new Omega Speedmaster Broad Arrow once from a seller in Germany when the USD was sky high and shipped it to the US. Customs dutied the watch at 10% or $300, which was just plain wrong. I called the Customs house in Detroit and spoke to 3 different "import specialists" who assured me that this was correct. I decided they did not know their job so I broke down each of the HTSU codes in a letter to the Regional Office in Chicago, explained how each applied to my watch, and figured the actual duty at only $43.17. I got a letter back from the guy in charge agreeing with my assessment and asked if he could use my letter as a template for other persons to use because it was so good. He said I correctly figured out the duty to the penny. Make some calls first.

 

[68SPRINT]

Thanks for the info guys.

Looking at the '67 390 registry, there are only 46 fastbacks with the deluxe interior registered. I've given this info to customs so we'll wait and see.

Thanks again,
Darren