When you’re importing a used car from Northern Ireland, as opposed to Great Britain (which is England, Wales, and Scotland – it only becomes the United Kingdom when you include Northern Ireland), the rules for what taxes and charges you have to pay are subtly different, and a little more complicated.

Will I still have to pay VRT?

Yes – Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) applies whether you’re importing from GB or NI. It’s worked out as a percentage of the car’s Open Market Selling Price (OMSP) which is NOT the price you’ve actually paid for the car, but instead the price that the Revenue Commissioners (the department of the Irish government that manages the VRT system) thinks the car would have been worth had you bought it in Ireland.

VRT rates range from seven per cent of the OMSP – for cars with CO2 emissions between 0g/km and 50g/km – up to 41 per cent for cars with CO2 emissions above 190g/km. There’s also a NOx levy to pay, which is calculated on a car’s emissions of nitrogen oxides, which is something that largely only affects older diesel-engined cars to any great extent.

What about VAT?

This is where you’ll find both opportunity and complexity. In theory, as far as Revenue and the importing of used cars is concerned, Northern Ireland still operates under EU regulations, so you shouldn’t have to pay any VAT as long as the car is more than six months old, and has more than 6,000km on the clock (or the mileage equivalent, which is 3,720 miles).

However, there’s a significant wrinkle, and it’s one designed specifically to prevent car dealers in Northern Ireland importing cars to order for customers in the Republic from the rest of the UK. According to Revenue, in order to avoid needing to pay VAT: “Proof will be required that the vehicle has been in private ownership for a reasonable period of time.”

Now, we’ve quizzed Revenue on this point in the past, but there’s still no specific length of time which qualifies for ‘a reasonable period’. Is it two weeks? Two months? Two years? We don’t know and Revenue won’t say, allowing for considerable wiggle room for each car to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Proof will be needed that the car has been registered to a private owner in Northern Ireland, and that the car has a history of MOT tests in NI.

What if I want to buy a car that a dealer has just brought in from GB?

This is potentially possible – after all, how can Revenue prove that a dealer specifically brought in a car just for you, rather than you simply went browsing and found the car you want?

For this to work, the car you’re buying must have been brought into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK under the Windsor Framework – that’s the post-Brexit agreement thrashed out between the UK, Ireland and the EU. Basically, it means that the dealer must have made a customs declaration that the car was moving to NI. There is a customs charge that has to be paid – ten per cent of the value – by the dealer in NI if the car was not originally built in the UK, which limits your options somewhat and means that the car might be a little more expensive, but then again such popular models as the Toyota Corolla and the Nissan Qashqai are actually UK-made, so it’s not the end of the world.

What about customs duty for me?

The same regulations apply to customs duty as for VAT – if the car has already been registered and in use in Northern Ireland ‘for a reasonable time’ then no customs duty applies. If it’s newly arrived in NI, then it has to conform to the Windsor Framework.

So how much can I save by buying in Northern Ireland?

If the car you buy from NI qualifies either under the previous ownership rule, or the Windsor Framework rules, then you won’t have to pay customs duty nor VAT. Customs duty is usually charged at ten per cent of the vehicle’s price, plus shipping costs. VAT on entry into Ireland is charged at 23 per cent of the vehicle’s price, plus shipping and customs charges. So there are potentially savings to be made, but make sure you have all your paperwork in order and you do all the calculations before making any purchase.