Transporting a Vehicle to Sweden

If you are not European, you will find importing cars to a European country to be a tedious process. You have to take the decision on car shipping from usa only after a lot of careful consideration. It is true that shipping an old car is much less expensive than buying a new car. But your car must comply with European standards if you wish to import car in Sweden. Moreover, if you can’t avail of duty free import, you will have to pay import duties as well as VAT. The total transport price of the vehicle becomes very expensive if you have to convert your car to suit the European standards and also have to pay all the taxes. So it is better to import car from usa to Sweden if it goes as a part of your household, and you don’t wish to part with your expensive car.

You are allowed to drive a car with foreign license plates for one year. After a year, you will have to pay about 2500 SEK to obtain Swedish license plates. Citizens of EU countries and citizens of Switzerland and Japan are allowed to just exchange their license and not pay any fee. Owners of all vehicles must pay an annual road tax, determined by the weight of your car. It is mandatory to purchase traffic insurance and liability insurance to drive your car in Sweden.

The price of transporting your vehicle to Sweden will become much less if you can qualify to import your car duty free. If you agree you will not sell the car for the next twelve months, and if you car is at least one year old, then you can qualify for tax free import. You will have to move to Sweden, and having your car shipped to Sweden has to be in conjunction with your moving. You must have valid proof that you intend to stay in Sweden for more than three months, to quality for duty free import. You have to agree to use the car for personal reasons only, and you mustn’t have imported another car free of duty in the last three years. If you are able to meet all these various conditions, then you will qualify to be exempt from import tax and VAT.

However, if you don’t qualify for duty free import, you have to pay 10% customs duty along with the shipping fees to the Swedish tax authorities. A 25% VAT has to be paid also. Depending on the condition of your car, a scrap tax may be collected also. Totally, your expenses to import car in to Sweden may add up to $1000 to $2000. Some people do all the paperwork by themselves and decide to ship their car from usa on their own, to save money. You can definitely save a few hundred dollars if you ship on your own, but you need to be aware of all the rules, and be willing to face any crisis while doing your car shipping from usa.

You can save on costs by using RO/RO service to ship your car to Sweden safely. If your car isn’t very expensive, don’t use container shipping. Don’t forget to buy marine insurance for your car, and don’t try to save on vehicle transport price to Sweden by cutting down on insurance costs while importing your car from usa.