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Importing a German Car into The Netherlands

2017 Skoda Rapid Spaceback

It’s really possible to save a lot of money importing a car like this, and here in the Netherlands there’s not much information in English on the topic.  In fact a lot of the information in Dutch is posted by Internet trolls and misleading, suggesting it’s illegal, difficult or you need to make use of an importer.  In fact it’s very easy to do yourself, but is a little time consuming.

It may seem strange that in order to use a car purchased in Germany in The Netherlands the car has to be ‘imported’, but that’s still the reality in Europe.  Actually, I think even taking a car from one US state to another can involve some red tape, and this probably isn’t so different.  In fact I think this same process exists many places, which is why I thought I would post about my experiences.

Why Import a Car?

My top motivation was because I hate Dutch car dealers.  They are such a scam.  The country is small, and the few dealers that exist here all operate as a cartel.  They use the excuse that when they themselves import a car they need to pay taxes up front, so they can only import cars that sell quickly.  In fact it’s more like they only import cars that make them the most money.  When you go to a car dealership, they will walk over to the car they want to sell you and if you don’t want to buy it they just shrug their shoulders.

In fact there are many colors not available here, because the dealers only want to stock very neutral colors.  There are also many configuration options like large and/or diesel engines with cheaper interior trim levels, that don’t provide the dealers with enough profit.  For some reason if you want a diesel engine here, you have to pay through the nose for it with a more expensive interior, and the dealers just think we have to accept that.

Besides many models of cars not being available, there are also very significant tax benefits to importing a used car.  BPM is the Dutch tax you have to pay on all cars here, and if you import a car that’s for example 1 year old, you get at least a 30% discount.  The sweet spot in this discount is about 18 months (at about a 40% discount), but even a car that’s just a few months old can save you a lot of money.  An even older car qualifies for a larger discount, but the increase tapers off after 18 months.  Before discounts, BPM tax can range from about €3000-10000, so getting a discount is very important.

When you import a used car you also pay the sales tax (VAT) in the country you buy the car, and in Germany this is 19%, while here in the Netherlands it’s 21%.  This alone is a significant savings.

What is a Used Car and How to Find One

In the EU a used car is defined as one at least 6 months old, with at least 6000 km on the odometer.

The difficult thing about importing a brand new car is you need to pay sales tax (VAT) in your home country.  That means, in theory, the dealer has to sell you the car without tax, and instead you have to pay this at home when you register the car.  Since some people have found ways of not paying this tax at all, most dealers won’t sell a car to you in this way because they might end up being liable for this tax.  It may be possible to pay an importer to import a new car for you, but it’s hard to do this as an individual.

If you are looking for a specific car, websites autoscout24.de and mobile.de offer a very large selection of used cars — but be careful!  First of all do not believe the reviews on these sites, because negative reviews are blocked and removed.  Just like anywhere, there is also a lot of fraud in Germany with used car sales.  There are many bad dealers, especially the smaller ones.  The RDW, the Dutch car regulatory agency reports that 1 in 5 odometers in imported German cars shows signs of tampering, and half of these have definitely been altered.  Be particularly careful of cars that have been in accidents.  By law all cars sold are supposed to come with a 1 year warranty, unless you wave this right, so be careful what you sign.

Most people without technical knowledge of cars will want to buy from a dealer that also sells new cars of the brand you are looking for.  For example, I bought a used Skoda, from a Skoda dealer.  In addition, be sure to research the dealer on the Internet.  Look at websites like trustpilot or Google Maps, which have uncensored reviews.  Many of these dealers are huge, and work on the basis of low commissions and high volumes, so it’s still possible to get a good deal from them.

Jahreswagen

This is a German word that Google Translate says means ’employee car’ in English.  Actually, it’s more than that.

It turns out there are more people besides us looking for a high quality used car.  In fact it’s a cultural thing in Germany, that some people don’t believe in new cars.  The argument goes that a new car is too expensive, and many new cars have mechanical problems that emerge in the first year.  They say it’s better to buy a 1 year old car, that’s cheaper and has all the kinks worked out.

So if all these Germans are looking for lightly used cars, and people like you and me are looking for lightly used cars to export, where do all these 1 year old used cars come from?  The German car dealers have come up with a solution called a jahreswagen.  As a work benefit, they give new cars to their employees to drive for a few months, then return to the dealer.  Since they need to be resold, they have to be driven carefully, kept in perfect condition, and are generally still under manufacturers warranty by the time you get them.  These are several thousand euros cheaper than a new car, and fall under the legal definition of a used car.

The German car market is full of this sort of car.  Almost every dealer carries them.  This is a very good type of car to buy and export.

Don’t confuse this type of car with one that was a former rental car or taxi, which will certainly have been driven a lot harder.

Buying and Exporting the Car

When you buy a car, at least from a dealer, you generally first have to sign a purchase contract.  Among other things this gives the dealer your permission to register the car temporarily under your name with the German authorities, and allows the dealer to arrange temporary liability insurance and export plates like the ones in the picture above.  These plates are valid for either 14 or 28 days, and let you drive anywhere in the EU.  The period of validity is indicated in the red area on the right.  In this case the plates expired 1-aug-2018.

In the purchase contract you will also specify if you will pay by bank transfer or cash.  If you are bringing the cash from The Netherlands on public transport, consider the safety of this first.  Also here in Amsterdam there is significant crime in areas around banks that dispense large amounts of cash.  Even if you do decide to pay in cash, be wary of dealers who only accept cash, because they are probably trying to dodge taxes.

If you buy your car from a private party instead of a dealer, unless the seller lets you keep the old plates, you will probably have to go yourself to the KFZ-Zulassungsstelle in Germany and arrange these plates.  In this case, be sure you have arranged liability insurance in advance, or they won’t issue the plates.  In any event, someone, either you or the seller, has to go to the KFZ-Zulassungsstelle and register the car as exported.

These plates are the subject of urban legends.  If you read Internet forums in Dutch some people will suggest they are illegal in The Netherlands, or that people who live here can’t use them because they represent an evasion of Dutch road tax.  This is all nonsense, they are issued under an EU directive and the Dutch authorities issue a similar plate themselves for exporting cars.  They are 100% valid across the entire EU, regardless of the driver of the vehicle.

The EU has decided all EU residents have the right to buy a car in any other EU country and bring it home to use, and The Netherlands has to make this possible.  This is simply the law.

Be careful, there’s a similar looking plate with a 5 day validity, that’s only valid in Germany.  Using a 5 day plate to drive back to The Netherlands is at your own risk!

Importing and Registering the Car

Once back in The Netherlands you have to go to the Dutch counterpart of the German KFZ-Zulassungsstelle, which is called the RDW.  In short, you need to check the opening hours of the office closest to you, then show up at least a half hour before that.  Take a number, wait your turn, present all the paperwork for the car, get another number and wait for your car to be inspected.  For an almost new car expect the inspection itself to take about 90 seconds, and another 15 minutes for the guy to do all the paperwork.

The RDW will confiscate all the registration related paperwork for your car, but will let you keep the license plates.  This means it’s technically no longer legal to drive your car, but parking it on the street is no big problem.  Remember your export plates have the expiration date in big letters on the front, so don’t drag your feet too long in the registration process, or you will probably have to find off street parking for your car.

If you go to the RDW in Amsterdam, on the other side of the N200 is a neighborhood with free on street parking!  This is a good place to just leave your car for a week or two.

After you pass the inspection, you need to submit the completed tax forms.  If you are organized enough to have filled these out in advance, there’s a dropbox at the RDW.  Otherwise, you have to send them by mail, which takes an extra day or two.

The tax forms are not for the faint of heart.  They take some time, and are all in Dutch.  They are all online, in digital form, and can all be translated with Google Translate.  Basically you can choose either the current rules for determining the BPM tax, or the ones in effect when the car was newly registered.  You have to compute both of these.  You also get a discount for importing a used car, and you can either base this on the actual depreciation or on their standard formula.  Their formula is probably more advantageous, and if you accept it you don’t have to calculate the actual depreciation.  There is also a space for you to state the catalog price of the car, which is the new list price less all taxes.

After you submit the tax form to the Customs/Tax Authorities, it takes about 2 days for them to process the form.  About 5 days after you pay the assessed taxes, the RDW will complete the registration and send the registration card to you.  With the registration card you can get plates made at most mechanics or lots of other places, and then you’re done!  In total, this process takes about 5-7 working days.

Don’t forget to insure your new car.

Update 19 Dec 2018:  Tax Forms

Some people have been sending me emails with different questions, but one concerned the rule of moving to the Netherlands and bringing your car as part of your household goods.  In this case you don’t need to pay BPM.  As far as I can see on the tax authority’s website, the procedure for this is pretty much exactly as I have already laid out here, but you have to file an additional form to ask for the exemption, which is also unfortunately in Dutch.

The form to ask for the moving exemption is here.

The general tax form that everyone has to file as part of registering the car is here.

These forms are in Dutch, but you can probably copy and paste the text into Google translate.

You probably need a Dutch taxpayer ID before you file any forms.  This is called a Burger ServiceNummer or BSN.

I expect these links to change, so if the links don’t work don’t hesitate to send me a mail and I will track down the new links.

The tax authorities are not clear about when the form asking for the relocation exemption needs to be filed.  It apparently can be filed before or up to 1 year after you move to the Netherlands.  If you file it after registration, you will need to pay the BPM up front and get a refund later.

If you are asking for a BPM exemption, be sure to put it in perspective.  For a new car the BPM can be around €6000-10000, but this goes down quickly with the age of the car.  A 5-year old car is probably around €500, and if you have a car much older than that, it may not be worth asking for an exemption.

If you have any questions, for example about dealers or tax forms, please feel free to contact me via the contact link or leave a comment.  nederlands kan ook

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Seitan for the Freezer

Seitan is a meat substitute made from wheat gluten.  I don’t post a lot of recipes here, but I’ve been working on a modified version of this recipe, and I needed a place to put it where I knew I could find it when I wanted it, so I thought I would share it with all of you.  This recipe is a bulk recipe, intended for going into the freezer which is well suited for seitan.  If you’re new to cooking or eating seitan, you might want to try the original recipe first, then move on to this recipe when you’re ready to make it in bulk.

Besides scaling up the recipe, I’ve substituted vegetable bouillon for the soy sauce and metric-ized it.  I’ve also split the simmering into 2 batches, which results in less leftover broth.  For this recipe I use vegetable bouillon powder which makes 1L bouillon with 3 tablespoons powder, which is pretty standard at least here.  If you use bouillon cubes or powder of another concentration, you will need to adjust the recipe.

Makes 18 servings, about 3 kg; I put each serving into a 2 cup freezer container.

Cooking time is about 2.5 hours.

Dry Ingredients:

6 cups vital wheat gluten flour
1 cup + 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
4 tablespoons bouillon powder

Wet Ingredients:

4-12 cloves of pressed garlic, depending on your taste and the size of cloves
juice of 3 medium to large sized lemons
4.5 cups of water

Oil:

1/3 cup of olive oil

Simmering Broth:

5L water
1 cup bouillon powder

Mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls.  Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, then add the oil.  First stir with a fork, then knead with your hands until the dough is stiff and rubbery, about 5 minutes.  You will know when it’s been kneaded enough, because it will suddenly become very stiff.

Divide the dough into 18 roughly equal sized portions, about 130-150g each, and knead each one into a flat disk.  Let sit for at least 5 minutes.  You are going to simmer them in two batches, and the second batch can sit while the first one cooks.

Bring the simmering broth to a boil in a large pot.  I use a 20L pot.  Place the first 9 pieces in the pot and return to boil over a high flame.  Then simmer for 45 minutes at the lowest possible simmer.  Too high of a flame will result in a looser texture, that the original recipe compares to brains.

After cooking let sit in the covered pot with the flame off for another 15 minutes.

Before doing the second batch add 1L of water to make up for the lost volume.

Place the cooked seitan disks into freezer containers covered with broth.  They can just freeze in the liquid.

Slicing and frying the seitan in a little olive oil before eating gives it a nice flavor.

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Why I’m Against the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI)

The OSSI is a mechanism to facilitate the privatization of the world’s agricultural biodiversity.  It’s no different from what the US Seed Savers Exchange and similar organizations have become.  It’s a tool of the wealthy and powerful families who use it as a way to promote division in those who work with biodiversity, and then to spread fake news to replace reality.  It’s an extension of the vision some social studies academics have, and it’s purpose is a place for us to occupy in the future they’ve designed for us.

In the US OSSI takes the form of a fairly innocent pledge, but elsewhere in the world it’s a legally binding contract with wide ranging consequences.

Nothing to do with Open Source

As someone who has a number of years experience working with Open Source software, let me be clear that OSSI is something completely different.

First of all there is no source with open source seeds.  This is a really important difference.  Seeds are not software.

Open source software can be modified and sold, and the programmer can retain the rights over their own enhancements.  The legally binding version of OSSI in Europe is all encompassing, and also applies to all enhancements or future developments.  Any plant breeder who works with OSSI material looses rights of control over their own material.

Open source software is available to anyone, even those to don’t agree with or accept the licensing terms.  OSSI seeds cannot be legally transfered without a binding contract, and those who do not accept the contract may not legally use the seeds.

Open source software exists in an environment where downloads are always free over the Internet.  This is not the case with seeds, which require physical ownership, and are not always free.  This means not everyone necessarily has access to the material for a reasonable price.

The philosophy of Open Source software concerns what you are allowed to do.  Pretty much the only thing you aren’t allowed to do is claim ownership over it.  The philosophy behind the legally binding OSSI is that you must share it, and don’t have the right to keep it privately in your own garden if you choose.  This is perverted and wrong.

The Real Purpose of OSSI

The worlds genetic resources are being privatized, with some falling into private hands.  This can create a situation where some of it is not usable, or possibly not usable by everyone.  For example, maybe a plant breeder has discovered a gene that no one else has, and decides to only let a small number of farmers grow it.  Suddenly this could be a major marketing advantage compared to a company like Monsanto-Bayer.  The purpose of OSSI is to legally require all genetic material be available to the larger agricultural companies.

Under the terms of the CBD and the Nagoya Protocol, genetic material generally has to be transfered from one party to another by means of a legally binding contract.  Unless you have access to fairly extensive legal advice, developing these contracts is beyond the means of most people.  In addition, maintaining the administration and business aspects is generally beyond the means of a single farmer or plant breeder, and mostly has to be done within organizations and cooperatives.

For many people, legally speaking, the best option is to simply collect biodiversity and not share it with anyone, barring a few exceptions.  OSSI undermines this option.

The Social Studies Angle

It seems strange this issue would come down to social studies academics.  Most of us have no contact with this discipline.  Most of us were unaware while they were busy writing and implementing the CBD, and it’s now been adopted by almost every country on the planet.

Jack Kloppenburg, the founder of OSSI, has a sociology background which is part of social studies.

I don’t think the world or the seed movement needs our future planned and laid out by any one or any group.  I don’t think many people would willingly participate.

What Can We Do?

This isn’t an easy question to answer.  Certainly some of us are employed by OSSI or other social studies initiatives.  Everyone needs an income to survive.

Starting an independent initiative is increasingly difficult.  It’s not possible to start something like the Seed Savers Exchange Kent Whealy and his wife Diane did in their living room in 1975.  You are immediately up against a great deal of money and people who want to maintain control over the situation.  The reality is we need to get used to doing our own thing, under the radar of these organizations.

Certainly an important part of working with biodiversity is being very careful about accepting (shrink-wrapped) contracts and terms and conditions with seeds.  These are becoming increasingly important.

I think this is going to be a topic of discussion for a long time.  I welcome any comments anyone has, either as a public comment here or privately via the contact link on this blog.

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Biodiversity and Democracy

Old Paradigm

The old paradigm was a battle between civil society (us) and the food industry (them).  On both sides were agricultural scientists, playing an active role in both advocacy, and practical matters like plant breeding and food science.

I think many people are still thinking in this way, but the situation has become a lot more complex in the last few years.  I posted the other day about the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), which is the privatization of biodiversity.  This has really changed the playing field quite a bit.

New paradigm

The new paradigm looks something like this.  Agricultural scientists no longer work on behalf of the food industry or civil society, but rather via the social studies academics.

I have posted before about the mechanism of fake news.  Beyond fake news, the academics in this paradigm are actually involved in rewriting history as well as designing future societies for us to live in.  Here in the Netherlands for example is the International Institute of Social Studies (http://iss.nl) in The Hague, and the associated publication The Journal of Peasant Studies.  They continue to be active in a very distorted version of Dutch history, especially surrounding WWII, and they promote a very racist version of Dutch society in which only white Dutch people are entitled to make decisions and have valid opinions.  They are actively researching and analyzing culture and traditions surrounding traditional agriculture, and are working to impose their own version of this on society at large.

Social studies academics and wealthy families have been working in the background for a number of years, taking over civil society organizations like The Seed Savers Exchange in the US, activist organizations in Europe and elsewhere like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, even creating new organizations like Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI).  Their goal is to make it impossible for any independent organization to exist that might challenge their goals.  Backing them is the unlimited funding of the world’s wealthiest 1%.

One of the most common type of NGO I encounter is one that claims to have a particular goal, but in fact is working in the opposite direction.  For example, recently I posted about fake news and mentioned a US organization from the 1980’s called Partnership for a Drug Free America.  While they claimed to be against drugs, this wasn’t true.  In fact we now know they were funded by the tobacco and alcohol companies, and their goal was to get young people to stop using illegal drugs and instead use legal ones.

One organization like this is Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO, http://corporateeurope.org/) whose stated goal is “is a research and campaign group working to expose and challenge the privileged access and influence enjoyed by corporations and their lobby groups in EU policy making.”  You can imagine what the opposite of this is.  In fact they are a well funded organization that offers their services to the highest bidder.  Financial disclosures on the Internet suggest they turnover about €5 million per year, and this clearly isn’t helping society at large.  In fact much of this money goes into lobby efforts which support Europe’s wealthy families, as well as NGOs like Greenpeace which promote a very perverse sense of what’s normal in society.  By having such a stated goal, and virtually unlimited funds, they can keep out any organization that may truly have these goals.  They also have access to politicians ostensibly to lobby for their stated goal, but behind the scenes they can have private meetings with politicians where different ideas are expressed.

Because the social studies academics have virtually unlimited funds, in fact they and some of their partner organizations and groups are employers and other sources of funding for many well intentioned activists and others who work with biodiversity.  Actually, I hardly know anyone working in biodiversity who isn’t financially dependent on this part of the new paradigm.

What’s also happening is things are going wrong at many levels.  I mentioned some of these in my recent post on CBD.  Until recently many of the social studies academics and wealthy families were working quietly behind the scenes.  Because things are going wrong, many of them are coming out in a more visible way, in order to take charge and try to get things working again.

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Convention on Biodiversity (CBD)

In short, the CBD is the privatization of biodiversity.

According to this treaty, all biodiversity is owned by someone; sometimes nations and sometimes privately.  One thing for sure, the CBD is coming, and for the moment it’s not likely anyone can stop it.

The CBD caught a lot of us in the seed movement by surprise.  It’s been underway for probably 30 or more years, and no secret, but most of us doubted it had anything to do with what we were working on.  International treaties are always hard to just read and understand, and most of them have underlying intentions that aren’t always made clear.  This treaty is no exception.

I’m no lawyer, and I’m not even writing this post with a copy of the treaty for reference, so it’s possible there are technical errors or omissions here.  The purpose of this post is just to give an over all idea of what’s going on.

Parties

All UN member nations are a party to this treaty except the United States and the Vatican.  The US is always reluctant to be legally bound by international treaties, and says it believes domestic law offers them the same protection.

This makes it one of the most universally accepted treaties in the world.  It also creates an interesting situation in the US.

A great deal of this treaty is based on written agreements between parties, and since these are generally enforcible everywhere, even people in the US are going to feel the impact of this treaty.

Global Seed Vault at Svalbard

For decades now, using the CBD sister treaty, The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), the genetic resources for agriculture have been stolen from around the world and stored at Svalbard.  Now they are to be sold back to us using the CBD.

The costs of running a seed vault like Svalbard should not be underestimated.  Stocks need to be maintained for distribution, and periodically all genetic resources need to be regrown or they will die in storage.  As they are regrown, they need to be well isolated and kept genetically pure.  History is full of projects like Svalbard, that once started could not raise sufficient funds to keep the genetic resources alive.  In fact, there are not really many examples of successful long term genetic resource storage.

There is every reason to believe that Svalbard will eventually fail, and in fact they have recently been involved in large scale fund raising efforts.  The global system for storing our genetic resources is apparently currently in the process of failing, slowly, not catastrophically.

The global system for storing genetic resources was supposed to be funded by it’s users.  In practice that’s not happening.  Industrial users of genetic resources are supposed to return a percentage of their profits, but the rate of this happening is very low.

Users of genetic resources that employ intellectual property rights are supposed to pay back a percentage of these profits, but the system of patenting seeds is in disarray now, and it’s unlikely to be benefiting Svalbard or genetic conservation to any great extent.

The Nagoya Protocol

One of the most unworkable parts of the CBD is the Nagoya Protocol.  About half the nations who are a party to the main CBD treaty, are also a party to this protocol.

This protocol basically says for all species related to food, someone owns all the genes in all species.

Under this protocol, a seed company can continue to operate as they do now, but only if the customer buying the seeds doesn’t use them for ‘purposes of biodiversity’.  In other words, seeds cannot be saved from the resulting plants and they can’t be used in breeding projects.

Otherwise, when not just seeds are at issue, but also biodiversity, transfer of the seeds generally has to take place on the basis of a contract.  This contract can say almost anything, and writing these contracts is a big and expensive legal undertaking.  Among other things, these contracts can specify restrictions and mandate royalties.

Over time as the seeds get sold, resold, and used for breeding projects, these contracts accumulate.  Restrictions always remain and accumulate, and royalties get divided into smaller and smaller slices, and distributed to more and more people.

In fact, the administration of these contracts is so complex, it’s not really realistic for a single person to manage it themselves.  In general you have to think in terms of cooperatives or other organizations managing the business and administrative aspects.

In case you might be dismissive about the Nagoya Protocol, and just ignore all the administration, the treaty has a surprise waiting for you.  The treaty specifies the member states shall assess ‘sufficient penalties to ensure compliance’.  In other words, if you don’t do the paperwork correctly, your national government must apply increasing penalties — even incarceration, limited only by the constitutionality of those penalties — until you get it right.

The Backers

Who’s behind the CBD and ITPGRFA?

The visible parties are mostly social studies related academics.  This might sound a little strange, as many of us even with university degrees may have never have even taken a social studies class.  I’m going to go a little deeper into this in other posts, but basically these are people who’s job it is to both study past societies and design future societies.  A lot of the activity for these treaties comes out of The International Institute for Social Studies in The Hague (https://www.iss.nl/), and related people in Rome.

Behind the academics however are the wealthy and powerful families of the US and Europe, with unlimited funds — the 1%.  For example Amy Goldman of the Goldman-Sax family is a prominent figure associated with the American Seed Savers Exchange and Svalbard, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation helped fund Svalbard, the Rockefeller foundation is deeply involved in many direct and indirect ways.  There are many other wealthy families involved, also many European families.

What Can We Do?

This is a complicated question, and it depends a bit on how connected you are to biodiversity and where you live.  This is probably going to be a topic of discussion for a long time.

There are a number of holes and weaknesses in these treaties, and different countries are parties to different parts of it.  For example, people in the US may be in a position to undermine some parts of the treaty by supplying genetic material to people in other places.  Many countries are not a party to the Nagoya Protocol and might find themselves in a similar position.

If you are the holder of a major collection of biodiversity, you may be able to do something creative by licensing it’s use.  European seed saving organizations Arche Noah and Kokopelli have taken very different but clever approaches.

If you’re just a consumer, keep in mind the whole premise of these treaties is that biodiversity is precious, which it is, and something people will pay a lot of money for, which I find doubtful.  As a consumer, keep your wits about you and think about what you’re paying for.  In Europe, certified organic isn’t what it used to be, and maybe isn’t so interesting anymore.  Don’t pay unnecessarily for your food, and try to buy as directly as possible from the source.

Everyone could benefit by educating themselves on fake news, and how the wealthy classes control people.

I don’t pretend all social studies people are bad, but many are at least a little suspect.  Don’t be so quick to believe the things they say, and consider they are often the source of fake news of the wealthy classes.