Good news especially for owners, buyers and sellers of older used boats: They no longer have to fear that they will be asked for proof of VAT paid during a customs or police check. This was recently reported by the magazine "boote".
As a rule, the original shipyard invoice is required as proof, but in many cases this is no longer available. It is not uncommon for boat sales to fail at this point because the seller did not have the proof of tax and the potential buyer did not want to take the risk of subsequent taxation.
The main customs office in Kiel has now clarified that there is no general obligation for owners to provide proof of VAT within the German sea and customs border. In case of doubt, the burden of proof would lie with the authorities, who would then have to prove to the owner that they had not paid the tax.
However, there are several catches. One of them is that the Federal Ministry of Finance did not want to officially confirm the statement made by the customs officers in Kiel. And when entering Germany or the EU, completely different rules apply.
You can now find out what these are and what the scandal surrounding the obligation to provide proof of tax is all aboutin the new YACHT (issue 3/2020, available in magazine shops from Wednesday and as a Digital edition available).
Pascal Schürmann
Editor YACHT
