Taking your car to Germany: re-registering, the HU — and money back from the Netherlands

Unlike with England or Australia, taking your car to Germany is not a sum with a surprising outcome: you drive there yourself, there is no import tax, and your Dutch driving licence simply stays valid until it expires. What does have to happen is re-registering — and on the Dutch side there is something to be gained from it.

When does it have to happen?

German law doesn't hang it on a number of weeks but on the concept of regelmäßiger Standort (regular location): driving on a foreign registration is only allowed as long as your car does not have its permanent base in Germany. The moment you emigrate, that base is there by definition — and the car belongs on German plates. Don't stretch it: your Meldebescheinigung tells every police officer exactly since when you have lived there.

The German side: four things, in this order

1. Insurance first. A German car insurer gives you an eVB number — the electronic insurance confirmation the Zulassungsstelle wants to see before anything at all is registered.
2. The HU inspection (the "TÜV", officially Hauptuntersuchung): a valid German inspection is needed for registration — count on around € 170 including the emissions test; the Dutch APK doesn't fulfil that role.
3. The Zulassungsstelle: with your proof of identity plus Meldebescheinigung (so the Anmeldung comes before the car), the Dutch registration certificate and the old plates, the manufacturer's CoC document, the eVB number, the inspection certificate and a SEPA direct debit mandate for the road tax. The registration itself costs from € 34.70, plus around € 20-40 for new plates.
4. The Umweltplakette (± € 6-7): the green environmental sticker you need in almost every German city centre — and which is linked to the registration, so after re-registering you buy a new one.

German road tax (Kfz-Steuer, collected by customs via that SEPA mandate) is mild for most petrol cars: € 2 per 100 cc plus a CO2 scale above 95 g/km — count indicatively on € 80-120 per year for an average petrol car, considerably less than Dutch motor vehicle tax.

The Dutch side: reclaim your BPM

This is where the money is. At the RDW you file an export notification (€ 12): you get a proof of indemnity (vrijwaringsbewijs), the export certificate for the German registration and white export plates with which you may still drive in the Netherlands for fourteen days. And then the part almost nobody knows: because your car is being permanently registered in another EU country, you can reclaim the residual BPM from the Belastingdienst — the not-yet-depreciated part of the purchase tax that was once in the Dutch price. The depreciation follows an age table; for a car a few years old it quickly comes to hundreds to thousands of euros. Two conditions to have sharp: the refund applies to cars registered in the Netherlands on or after 16 October 2006, and the German papers must show that the car was registered within thirteen weeks of the export status. So don't plan the German Zulassung too long after your RDW notification — those thirteen weeks are generous, but not infinite.