Aussie Importing Foreign Registered Yacht

[Cavalier 32]

Hi All,
Trying to budget my retirement yacht. If I brought a foreign registered yacht from Malaysia, how long have I got before I need to formally import it?

If I am not staying permanently, do I need to import it?

Plan was to bring her back and get her blue-water ready while I have an income and then retire and sail away.

I understand it is basically Import at 5% and GST at 10%. Do they usually accept your purchase price as value to figure that out? I realise cost of transport is also taken into account.

Cheers, Keith

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by Cavalier 32

Hi All,
Trying to budget my retirement yacht. If I brought a foreign registered yacht from Malaysia, how long have I got before I need to formally import it?

If I am not staying permanently, do I need to import it?

Plan was to bring her back and get her blue-water ready while I have an income and then retire and sail away.

I understand it is basically Import at 5% and GST at 10%. Do they usually accept your purchase price as value to figure that out? I realise cost of transport is also taken into account.

Cheers, Keith

Keith, Australian customs are the ones that you need to ask these questions of, they after all will be the ones applying the rules. My experience is that they are happy to provide information, the only caveat is, do it by email.

[Dave_S]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

Keith, Australian customs are the ones that you need to ask these questions of, they after all will be the ones applying the rules. My experience is that they are happy to provide information, the only caveat is, do it by email.

100% agree.... get it in writing.

[mcarthur]

Originally Posted by Cavalier 32

Hi All,
Trying to budget my retirement yacht. If I brought a foreign registered yacht from Malaysia, how long have I got before I need to formally import it?

If I am not staying permanently, do I need to import it?

Plan was to bring her back and get her blue-water ready while I have an income and then retire and sail away.

I understand it is basically Import at 5% and GST at 10%. Do they usually accept your purchase price as value to figure that out? I realise cost of transport is also taken into account.

(all my understanding, but do your own homework )

Background: we imported our boat about 18 months ago and have gone through the process.

As long as the boat doesn't come into Australia, you never need to import it. You can register a vessel as Australian (not state rego!) without importing it. You don't have to - by various means you can use almost any registration authority: in the past, Dutch was a fav due to cost, but I understand that's changed due to rule changes.

If the boat comes into Australian waters, and you are the owner (not a company ownership) and are Australian, then you will need to import it. That means paying GST and import duty. As a "nice" part, you pay the GST on the import duty as well .

The cost basis for the payment are...opaque. Essentially it's whatever Home Affairs want to charge you. They determine the value of your vessel, condition, etc. It may accord with what you paid for it - but may not! In our case it did. Your costs include the costs to bring the boat to the promised land as well - shipping if any, fuel, food, nail clippers, etc.

When you land, you may also get met by quarantine who can force you (well, you can turn around and leave Oz waters...) to have the boat professionally cleaned (more $$).

Overall, it was sortof worth the cost of an agent for us to cover all the behind the scenes paperwork. Didn't mean we escaped without lots of money for many things, but saved some heartburn trying to work out the custom's paperwork which is purposely designed for agents and regular users, not one-offs.

[Factor]

Originally Posted by mcarthur

You can register a vessel as Australian (not state rego!) without importing it. You don't have to - by various means you can use almost any registration authority: in the past, Dutch was a fav due to cost, but I understand that's changed due to rule changes..

You do have to register it on the Australian Register , see the shipping registration act. (69 Unregistered ships not to leave foreign ports) But don't believe me, call the AMSA registration office in Coffs harbour -

[fxykty]

If you are Australian citizen and resident in Australia then you will need to import the boat when it arrives in Australia. If you are Australian and not a resident and can prove that then you may be eligible for a control permit, which exempts you from having to import the boat for a year at a time. The country of registration of the boat does not matter.

Note that it is the Australian Border Force that makes that determination when you arrive in Australia. Nothing to do with Customs or any other agency.

[Audeamus]

I can only comment on NZ. We have British registered boat. As I am a NZ citizen we are liable for GST/import the minute we arrive in NZ. (There are similar rules for residents in Europe). Anyway I was able to determine in writing that we could apply for and would get a Temporary import exemption TIE. This allows us to keep the vessel in NZ for 12 months. We still have to pay the GST up front but it is refunded when we leave. This facility is not uncommon and often used for motor vehicle imports - which is where I found out about it.
As mentioned you do not need to register in Australia. If buying in Malaysia Langkawi is one of the more straight forward registrations(even if not buying in Malaysia).

[mcarthur]

Originally Posted by Factor

You do have to register it on the Australian Register , see the shipping registration act. (69 Unregistered ships not to leave foreign ports) But don't believe me, call the AMSA registration office in Coffs harbour -

As I said, you DON'T have to... if you do ownership by other means. The classic is a company ownership, registered in another jurisdiction. Yes, I have talked with AMSA (a number of times - their central office, not Coffs ).

Of course there's a number of issues with non-personal ownership, so do your due diligence on what that may mean for you if you went down that path.

[mcarthur]

Originally Posted by fxykty

If you are Australian citizen and resident in Australia then you will need to import the boat when it arrives in Australia. If you are Australian and not a resident and can prove that then you may be eligible for a control permit, which exempts you from having to import the boat for a year at a time. The country of registration of the boat does not matter.

Note that it is the Australian Border Force that makes that determination when you arrive in Australia. Nothing to do with Customs or any other agency.

Good points. Note though that Australian Border Force and Customs are under one entity, Dept. of Home Affairs - that includes the old Customs, Immigration AND Border Force. They may or may not talk with each other inside that entity of course . The old AQIS is now part Health, part DAWE.

[mcarthur]

For the OP, the "rules" were so opaque that there are past reports of registered vessels (as Factor says, on the Australian Register), wanting to leave Australian waters for a while to cruise, getting written acknowledgement that they would not have to re-pay duty and GST when coming back/home, and then the same owner being charged those later when re-entering the country.

Now that example was from 5 years ago, and things may have changed. But you may want to take that into account when planning...