Your car and your household contents to America: what is allowed, and why the car had better stay behind

The move to America has one pleasant rule and one that costs many people dearly. The pleasant one first.

Your household contents: duty-free, under two conditions

Used household goods may enter the US without import duties, provided you meet two requirements that customs formulates briefly and firmly: you have used the goods for at least one year abroad, and they aren't intended for someone else or for sale. Household effects include furniture, carpets, paintings, tableware, linen, audio equipment and the tools and professional books of your trade.

Note the distinction customs makes, because it's sharper than you think: clothing, jewellery, photographic equipment and portable radios are not household effects but personal effects. Those fall outside the household-effects exemption — although import duties on personal possessions you've owned for more than a year are usually waived. On vehicles customs is implacable: those are always dutiable.

The paperwork is one form: CBP Form 3299, the declaration for free entry of unaccompanied articles. Your mover or customs broker may lodge it for you — the form itself provides for an authorised person signing with a power of attorney, and the carrier fills in its own part. Do make sure your packing list matches what's in the container.

About that container: from Rotterdam to the American east coast you're roughly three to four weeks under way with a container of your own, and six to eight weeks with groupage — that only sails once it's full. The west coast is more expensive and slower. Besides the sea freight, count on port charges and customs clearance on the American side; those are rarely in the quoted price.

Two more things for the packing list. Alcohol is a matter of the state you arrive in — that determines how much you may import and whether you need a permit. And leave foodstuffs containing meat (stock cubes and soup mixes too) at home: failing to declare agricultural products costs $300 at the first offence.

Your car: the honest answer is "sell it here"

This is the most expensive illusion of the America route. A car built in Europe virtually never meets the American safety standards (FMVSS) and emission requirements. Customs writes it down itself, and that wording is a warning: be sceptical if a seller claims that a car meets the standards or is "easy to bring into compliance". Cars younger than 25 years have to meet all FMVSS to be imported permanently — full stop.

If you want it anyway, you run into two walls at once. For the safety side, a government-registered importer has to modify and certify the car, and you deposit a bond of one and a half times the customs value of the car. For the emission side, a recognised commercial importer has to do the same, and customs dryly notes that those rates are "very high". On top of all that comes 2.5% import duty. The environmental agency adds in capitals: arrange it before shipping, because a car that arrives without a valid arrangement can be seized.

And then the trap people really walk into. As a non-resident you may bring your car along duty-free for up to one year — that sounds like a way out. But if it doesn't meet the standards, it has to leave the country again within that year, and selling in the US isn't allowed. Customs leaves no room: there's no exemption from or extension of that export obligation. You've then paid for two ocean crossings for a car you may not keep.

The exception is the enthusiast's car of 25 years or older: that escapes the safety requirement. For everything else the sum is simple — sell in the Netherlands, and buy something back locally. Do put that in your budget as a fixed item: the money from your Dutch car you'll need again almost immediately in America, because in most states a car isn't a luxury but a condition for being able to work.