I have a Lexus RX350 which we use mostly in France. It is presently UK registered but I wonder if registering it in France would be worthwhile as the car tax in UK is £450 and nil in France. I think it would be OK to use it in UK and leave it there for the winter as we do now if it was registered in France and would save the cost of the UK car tax. Can anyone advise if this is very complicated or expensive to do?
Thank you very much for this Tim - very helpful. Just what I was seeking.
The CO2 is 288 so even without the up front costs at €2 per g it would be €576 just for this so UK tax at £450 is still cheaper.
In the end a no brainer.
The car tax annually is nil in France, but....
You pay based on the Puissance Fiscale and the CO2 emmisons.
A quick search (I think) shows the PF as 19.
You would (I guess) be looking at an up front fee (not counting costs of changing the headlights if you cannot adjust them) of over 2500€s. And if the CO2 emmisions over over a certain level you will have to pay an annual 'malus'.
You can get a better idea of the costs from here:
http://www.carte-grise.org
You will need to know the date in circulation, g/Km for the CO2 and the Puissance Fiscal. Just search make and year on something like Bon Coin to get an idea.
So think carefully before you act.
Thank you for this so far. The link was helpful but didn't actually cover our situation.
As far as I understand it I have an option to register the car in France - more or less equivalent to buying one for our use there and leaving it at the house. The point of considering this for the Lexus is simply the rather high rate of car tax in UK and that although it spends some time in UK we only actually use it there for about 40 days a year as when we are not in France we are in Cyprus where we are "resident". I don't want to make an "official" enquiry as I suspect that we may be told we couldn't do it although, in practice, if we did it would probably be OK. The key point seems to me to be whether or not it would involve a substantial cost to bring the car into line with French regulations. I suspect not as the headlights would not need to be changed as they do not have asymmetric dipping so it may only amount to adding an extra earth connection here and there and putting the car through a "control" which seems to cost about the same as an MOT in UK. What I am looking for is experience on the actual costs from someone who has done it.
Your Residency determines the actual need to register your car, should you export your lexus to France from the UK for use in France then there is no problem with registering it in France provided that you have a residence in France . However if you then start to use that vehicle in the UK for an extended period then the authorities could consider that the vehicle has been re exported to the UK and thus will need to be registered in the UK. there's lots of info out there for instance:-
http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/registration/taxes/index_en.htm
Thank you. The profile is a bit misleading as it only allows one country to be entered. We are not resident in France and it would be more accurate to have entered Cyprus/France/UK. I did try to find something by searching before I posted the question but nothing useful came up. If you know of some helpful links I would appreciate you sharing these.
In your profile you state that you are resident in the Gironde, therefore its not a question of if but when you register the car you have imported into France. Just read the other posts on how to register/insure etc on here. The search facility usually comes up trumps!