Shipping Personal Belongings To Croatia

[brucehills]

I plan to ship my furniture and other personal belongings from the UK to Croatia - does anyone know what the situation with regard to import duty / VAT etc would be?

[Peter Ellis]

Hi Bruce

I think it will depend upon your residence status. When I did it, I hadn't yet got my citizenship, but I did have permanent residence. I was able to import all my things free of import duty etc.

If you let me know your residence status I'll check with my local freight forwarder.

Cheers

Peter

[brucehills]

Peter,

Although we've owned a property in Croatia for 6 years or so we have only ever stayed for a week or two at a time and always entered on tourist visas. Next year we plan to apply for a residency permit and won't ship our furniture until that's organised.

Thanks

Bruce

[Peter Ellis]

Hi Bruce

I had an interesting meeting with the freight forwarder this morning.

Fundamentally, if you have a residence permit, you can import your belongings with zero import duty or PDV. She did make the point that it is necessary to get permanent residence within 6 mths of coming here and not apply for it after having been here for an extended period, or you could still be liable. I noted what you said, but I've included this for the benefit of anyone else contemplating it.

I used to advise that you could only import a car if it was less than 7 years old from the date of the chassis number, but this has apparently changed and they now go from a list that HAK produce of what cars have been homulgated, which can mean the car can be older, if it is listed.
For anyone planning to bring down a 'Blower' Bentley, anything over 30 years old is OK to import without homulgation, enabling the import of classic cars.

Hope this helps

[brucehills]

Thanks Peter,

Lots of very useful information. Sorry though your answers have generated a few more questions - do you know how / where I can get a copy of the HAK list of homolgated cars? Also if my car is on the list and I import it into Croatia does that mean I can register it there?

Bruce

[Peter Ellis]

Hi Bruce

I thought it might be on the HAK website www.hak.hr/en but it doesn't seem to be, although there is other useful information there.

I'll ask my freight forwarder, as she has a copy.

I think the answer is yes, but I'll check that, too. What have you got?

Cheers

[brucehills]

Peter,

I have a Nissan X-Trail - LHD 2.5L Petrol. 2007 model

Bruce