Bringing a Japanese car into France, from customs duty to the DREAL inspection

Customs duty under the EU-Japan agreement

The Economic Partnership Agreement between the European Union and Japan has progressively removed the customs duty on cars. The preferential rate is not automatic, though: you only get it if the Japanese origin of the vehicle is established.

Where origin is not proved, the common external tariff applies, which is 10% on a passenger car under heading 8703. The duty is then part of the base on which the 20% import VAT is calculated, so it is taxed twice over.

That is 3,000 EUR on a car worth 30,000, before the VAT that is charged on top of the duty, so the origin question is not an administrative detail, it is money.

Why nobody will send you an EUR.1 certificate

This is the part that catches out anyone used to older trade agreements: there is no EUR.1 certificate on this route. Origin is self-certified, either by a statement on origin made out by the exporter, or on the basis of the importer's own knowledge of how the car was made.

Asking a Japanese seller for an EUR.1 is asking for a document that does not exist under this agreement. What you get back is a polite refusal, or a fortnight of confusion while the exporter tries to work out what you want.

Sort out the wording of the statement on origin before the car is loaded, not while it is sitting in a French port.

Import VAT at 20%

As with any vehicle from outside the Union, French VAT at 20% falls due when the car is cleared through customs. The base is wider than the figure on the seller's invoice: it takes in the customs value, any duty, and the transport and insurance costs up to the first place of destination.

The freight is therefore taxed as well as the car, which is worth remembering when a cheap car carries expensive shipping. The 20% lands on the whole of it.

There is no quitus fiscal to obtain here. That tax clearance certificate is what the French tax office issues for a car bought in another EU country. A Japanese car goes through customs instead, and the VAT is settled at that point.

Right-hand drive is the real hurdle

This is what really separates a Japanese import from an American one. A vehicle whose driving position is on the right cannot be registered on the strength of a European document alone. A réception à titre isolé, the individual approval of one single vehicle, is required, and that holds even when the car arrives from an EU country where people drive on the left.

Once the car is registered, driving it in France with the wheel on the right is perfectly legal. Nothing about the use is restricted, and there is no surcharge for it. It is the registration step that is heavier, not the driving.

The réception à titre isolé, step by step

The application is handled by the DREAL, the regional state body (direction régionale de l'environnement, de l'aménagement et du logement) that approves vehicles holding no European type approval.

• The vehicle has to be physically present.
• It is checked against the key safety requirements.
• The fee is 86.90 EUR for a passenger car or a van under 3.5 tonnes, payable on the day of the inspection.
• Anything that does not pass has to be put right before the approval is granted.

The car has to turn up in the flesh; this is not a paper exercise. Nor should the réception à titre isolé be confused with the contrôle technique, the periodic roadworthiness test every French car sits: they are two different things, and passing one says nothing about the other.

Once the approval is granted, it is what opens the way to the carte grise, the French registration certificate.

Check feasibility before you buy, not after

The real cost of a Japanese import is not the 86.90 EUR. It is the compliance work, where any is needed, and the time. That is why the feasibility is looked at before you commit to anything, rather than after the car has been paid for.

A car found to be impossible to bring into compliance at a sensible price is a car you should never have bought, and by that stage it is yours. We buy the vehicle and handle the shipping ourselves, so the question is settled while it can still be answered cheaply.

Two things drive the registration bill. The first is the cheval fiscal, the unit of the French tax horsepower rating that sets the price of the certificate. The second is the malus. A car with no European type approval, which is the normal case for a Japanese-market model, has its CO2 malus worked out on the puissance fiscale instead of a CO2 figure (article L. 421-64 of the code des impositions sur les biens et services), while the weight malus is based on the masse en ordre de marche, the kerb weight in running order. One detail worth knowing if you are chasing a 1990s car: a vehicle first registered before 1 January 2015 pays neither malus (articles L. 421-60 and L. 421-73).

All of that can be priced in advance with our French-language registration and malus calculator. Ask what the job involves, and get a realistic timeline before you commit.

Cars over thirty years old: the collection route

A Japanese modern classic of more than thirty years can come under the collection regime, with the customs duty exemption and the reduced VAT rate that go with it, and a carte grise de collection issued on the strength of an attestation from the FFVE, the Fédération française des véhicules d'époque. It is by far the most favourable way in, and it is a large part of why the market for 1990s Japanese cars has become so active.

The threshold is judged on the date of first registration, not on the year the car was built. A car first registered in 1995 crosses the thirty-year line today; one first registered in 1998 does not. A car assembled at the end of one year and registered early in the next therefore sits on the later side of the line, which matters when you are within a few months of it.

Age only matters for the collection regime, past thirty years. Below that line, what sets the pace is the right-hand drive approval, not the year on the paperwork.

Buying the car through Autonero

Send us the link to the advert. We come back with the complete price and the tax calculation, so the landed figure is on the table before anything is decided. We buy the vehicle, ship it over and sell it to you: a French invoice, and the two-year statutory warranty you get when you buy from a French trader. 40% on ordering, the balance on delivery.

This is not the mandataire model, the French term for an agent who buys a car in your name for a fee, and it is not a broker who hands you a customs pack and wishes you luck. You are buying from a French dealer, and the paperwork is ours to get right.

Cars are delivered anywhere in mainland France, or you can collect yours at 10 rue du Bois Paris, 28630 Nogent-le-Phaye, in Eure-et-Loir, 6 km from Chartres and about an hour from the Paris ring road. Call +33 9 80 80 15 10 or use our French-language contact form, and we will come back with the numbers and a realistic timeline.

Related guides, in French: importing a car from the United States, importing a car from Germany and what the carte grise really costs on an imported vehicle.

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