A study of the profitability of a car import to Finland
1. INTRODUCTION
To purchase a car from another EU member state can come in some cases a lot more affordable than to purchase it from Finland. The better and bigger supply of used cars is attractive and rarities are easier to find from abroad. Finnish car taxation model adds up the uncertainty of the final price because the car tax is not always predictable. In general, the import of a car model which can be found from Finnish markets is not difficult.
However, the number of imported used cars has decreased. Importing is not as profitable as it was a few years ago. One fact that has diminished the profitability is the tighten car taxation. The car taxation was changed in the beginning of April 2012 in the way that carbon dioxide emission limits were raised. That does effect to the taxation of imported cars.
The purpose of this thesis is to find out whether it is profitable or not to import a car to Finland from another EU member country, from Germany and from Sweden. There has been discussion about the diminishing profitability of the imports and the goal is to investigate the current situation. The author is going to find out the means and the most economical way to import a car to Finland. In this thesis the concentration is going to be on passenger cars. All the other expenses, which are included and which are not able to put out to tender such as taxes, registration- and register plate fees are also going to make known.
As countries it was chosen Germany because it is the most popular country from where cars are imported to Finland and Sweden because it is closest country and cars markets are larger than in Finland.
As a research method is going to be used the empirical research method. Over the years the author has imported eight cars from other EU member state; seven from Germany and one from Estonia. The author has earlier done some research about how much does it costs and how long does different kinds of transportation methods take to get the car into Finland. This is how the research question “Is it profitable to import a car from another EU member country?” was obtained.
There is neither a commissioner nor a company from where the author could have gotten this topic. This is a topic, which interests the author a lot. This topic very suitable for the author because there have always been interest in cars and all kind of transportation equipment.
In year 2002 Supreme Administrative Court gave its decision in the case of Antti Siilin versus Helsinki district customs. The case was about car taxation and value added taxes, which are to be executed to a used car which is imported from another EU member state by a private person. Antti Siilin had imported a car from Germany to Finland in 20.4.1997. He purchased it from car dealership and paid all the concerning taxes to Finnish customs (The Supreme Administrative Court – KHO, 2002.) He won the case, because EU ruled that the Finnish car taxation was discriminatory to the private car importer.
This decision was the turning point in car importing to Finland for me and all the other importers. Now everybody had an opportunity to go to abroad and get a car of their dreams at a reasonable price. I followed the discussion about this new situation. After a
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