Offering export sales: what dealers need to set

Broadly two groups ask for a net price. The first are businesses that deduct VAT as input tax and therefore need an invoice showing VAT separately. The second are buyers who take the car across a customs border — between Switzerland or Liechtenstein and the EU, for example, or out of the EU into another third country. For them, the VAT of the country of sale is an item that can fall away on an export delivery, while import VAT is due in the destination country.

Both require that VAT can be shown on the invoice. With cars sold under the margin scheme, no VAT appears on the invoice, so there is no net price you could state either. On Carvexia everything therefore hangs on one tick box: net price and export terms can only be entered on a dealership's listings marked “VAT reclaimable”.

You enter the net price yourself; Carvexia never calculates it. It has to be below the price, appears beneath the price as stated by the dealer, and is cleared as soon as the price or currency changes — you then set it again. Within the EU, the question usually does not arise for used cars sold to private buyers, because the VAT stays where it was paid. This piece is therefore mainly about sales across a customs border.

There are two usual ways of handling it, and in the listing you choose one. In the first, the buyer pays gross and you refund the tax element once the export evidence has reached you. In the second, you invoice net and hold a deposit equal to the tax, which you release once the evidence arrives.

Economically, both come to the same thing: until the evidence arrives the tax amount sits with you, and if it never comes you keep it, because you then owe the tax. The difference lies in how it is presented to the buyer and in your bookkeeping. The net model reads more kindly to the buyer, because the amount that comes back is shown separately from the start. But it requires the purchase price and the deposit to be kept cleanly apart on paper and in your accounts.

Which invoice you issue under which model, and how you book a refund, is something to settle with your accountant. The choice itself is a question of your process: take the model your business can handle the same way every time, and stick with it. A buyer comparing two dealers pays less attention to the model than to whether the process has been explained.

In the listing you state who declares the export at the customs office: you as the dealer, the buyer, or a customs agent. The answer matters more than it looks, because the declaration is what produces the evidence your tax exemption depends on. Whoever declares has the process in hand — and with it the document.

If you declare yourself or hire a customs agent, the evidence arrives where you need it. Make sure your business is named in the declaration as the exporter or consignor; in some systems that determines who can retrieve the electronic document later. It costs effort or the agent's fee, which you either build into the price or state openly to the buyer.

If the buyer declares, you depend on them: they have to file the declaration correctly, leave through a staffed crossing and send you the document. That can work, but it puts your risk in the hands of someone who, once across the border, has no reason to hurry. Who may act as declarant is also governed by the customs law of the country of departure, among other things by residence — ask the export customs office before you offer this option.

The evidence is an official record that this particular car has left the customs territory. In Germany it is the exit endorsement from the electronic export procedure; in Switzerland, the export assessment notice issued by the Federal Office for Customs and Border Security; other states have equivalent documents. Your tax adviser or tax administration will tell you what further records your tax law requires. Vehicles often come with special rules: in Germany, for instance, a buyer who collects the car must be resident abroad, and the car must be exported permanently.

If no confirmation comes — because the buyer drove over an unstaffed crossing or the declaration was never completed — the EU has a procedure in which the export customs office can confirm the exit after the fact on the basis of other evidence. It is laborious and does not always end with a document. Without evidence the supply remains taxable, and you owe the tax.

The period in the listing is your commitment: within how many days of the evidence arriving you refund or release the deposit. State it and keep to it; if you leave it out, the vehicle page tells the buyer to put one in the contract. The second time limit goes in the contract: by when the evidence must reach you, and what happens if it does not — that the deposit is then retained as tax, or no refund is made. How long you yourself can wait for the evidence before you have to pay the tax over is a question for your tax adviser.

Under your terms, the vehicle page lists the four items that belong in the purchase contract in writing. Buyers read there what they should ask for — so you are best off offering it before they do. Then come the points that protect you: the state the car is exported to, the deadline for the evidence, the consequence if it does not arrive, and the buyer's duty to send you the document as soon as they have it. A template you use for every export sale saves arguments on handover day.

The account deserves a sentence of its own. The refund goes to the account the payment came from, or to one named in the contract — not to one supplied later by email. Changed bank details in an email are one of the best-known fraud patterns, and a payment across a border is particularly hard to recover.

The four items, as they appear on the vehicle page:

A buyer from another country needs documents for export, import and registration at home, and you can have them ready before they travel. So settle the paperwork before the appointment: reordering a missing certificate of conformity from the manufacturer takes time, and a buyer who has to travel a second time because of it will renegotiate the price.

How the car crosses the border — on a trailer, with export or customs plates, by carrier — is usually decided and organised by the buyer. What matters to you is that it leaves through a staffed crossing during its opening hours, because otherwise no evidence comes into being. Tell the buyer so explicitly; many think about the import and forget the export.

Which authority asks for what varies from country to country; the core is much the same everywhere:

The limit of your promises is the border of your country. You can commit to what happens in your business: price, how the tax is handled, the period, papers, declaration. You cannot commit to what happens in the destination country, and a sentence that sounds as if you do will be read as a promise in a dispute.

Within that limit, on the other hand, it pays to say clearly what you do. A dealer who can explain their process in three sentences — this is how the tax works, this is how the export is declared, this is how fast we refund — comes across to a buyer from abroad as more reliable than one with a lower price and a vague promise that it will all get sorted out. Beyond that limit, you promise nothing: