The first thing I would advise is do not listen to your fellow yachtie, especially if they have never imported a vessel themselves! Rather ironic then that I write this post I suppose, but I will just lay out what we did and how we did it.
We chose to have all the paperwork done by an Import Broker. This was the recommendation of a number of people in Brisbane who had just gone through the process. At the princely sum of $550 this seems like a lot of money, however as they perform these sorts of tasks all the time they can get it done in the most efficient and timely way. There is so much bureaucracy to wade through that we wouldn't even know where to start to do it ourselves and with only 3 weeks left in the country we wanted the boat imported and on the market as quickly as possible.
We contacted the broker, he sent us a list of what he needed in order to proceed, some of which I shall elaborate on further:
1. Signed letter of authorisation for him to proceed as our broker (they provide the document)
2. Valuation for the boat
3. History of the boat since we have owned her with a time line (month / year) and countries visited
4. Copy of the main information page of the captain's passport
5. List of any expenses involved for the trip from the last foreign port to the first Australian port where you cleared customs. This includes food, fuel and any expenses incurred in preparation for the voyage from the last foreign port of call prior to arrival in Australia.
6. Any documents issued by customs and AQIS (DFF) on arrival in Australia
7. Documents supporting manufacture in USA (only applicable if your hull, deck and bulk heads were made in the US)
A valuation was done and the GST and duty is paid according to that figure given (10% GST and 5% duty of the value). As our boat was built entirely in the US and according to the Free Trade Agreement that Australia have with them, we expected to get out of paying the 5% duty. However…as we have come to learn, bureaucracy had a few tricks up their sleeve to make you pay the full whack anyway. Although the boat had come from the US and we had the builder's certificate to prove it, we hadn't been the captain to sail her from the US and as such, the exemption rule didn't apply. To be honest I think it depends how customs feel on the day of receiving the exemption form as last year, a Tartan 37 owned by a Canadian didn't have to pay duty. O and they don't accept precedence as a good enough argument…so we just paid it!
In 48hrs of receiving the required documents, the import broker had given us a restriction to port (from customs), a quarantine sign off (we didn't need a second inspection as we had cleared in and had the termite review only 2 weeks previous) and an invoice for his work, GST and duty. We really recommend this guy, he was by far the cheapest and most sensible guy we spoke to and seemed to understand us cruisers. We had some horrendous quotes from other import brokers we contacted that told us we had to ditch our fridge, charged $800 for their time and had a 2 weeks turnaround time with guaranteed visit from a termite dog at an additional $1000. So if you need an import broker, we highly recommend David Ouston from Transways.
Did we need to ditch our fridge? No. Did we need to ditch our stove? No (despite a qualified gas man telling us so). I cannot stress enough how important it is to get at least 2 different opinions. If you need further details, please contact us and we will be happy to give you them. By shopping around and asking an awful lot of questions, we have saved ourselves thousands of dollars by warning us off some ludicrous advice, so we would love to return the favour.
No comments:
Post a Comment