Welcome to tax bytes for expats. The top tax tips you

want to know as an expat, the podcast is here to help answer

the common queries and concerns expats have when moving to

or from Ireland. Complex taxes explained

simply, we'll focus on the irish and international

tax issues to be aware of to ensure you save time,

money and stress. Hi everyone,

welcome to this episode of Tax Bytes for expats.

Today we are speaking with Damian Mason

of Mason Transport. For those of you who might not be

familiar with them, they offer a full door to door home relocation

service both to and from Ireland, Australia, Canada,

New Zealand, the US and Dubai to name but a few. They've been

going since 1996 and their philosophy has always been to

provide a high standard and personalised service to their customers. They

offer customs clearance, movement of personal effects, air, ocean

and road freight and car shipping, to name just a few of the offerings

they have. As you can imagine, Damian is somebody who works with

people who are moving to and from Ireland frequently and

we really want to have a chat with them so we can understand and potentially

debunk some of the myths that people come across in their research

phase of planning their move. Damian, thank you so much for

joining us. It's really, really nice to have you on the podcast. Hi Stephanie, how

are you? Yeah, I'm not too bad, I'm not too bad. It's

Friday, so it's always nice to record on a Friday and it's great to

have you on. Absolutely. So Damien, for those who are listening

who may not have heard of you, because I know a lot of people will

have, you're very highly spoken of in the expat community

for people coming to and from Ireland. Tell us a little bit about Mason transport

and I'd love to hear a little bit specifically about you and

what drew you to, I imagine is very interesting work.

Very interesting. Well, I started this back in

95. I worked for a manufacturing company and I just wanted

to drive, basically just get out on the road and drive. So

I had a good boss, he gave me a loan of a couple of thousand

euro and I bought a van and I just started doing deliveries for different

companies. And then after not so long, I just built it from

there. Just, you know, advertising and delivering door to

door and, you know, around Ireland, back and forth, UK

and that's where it started. So I just kind of built

it from there, then got another van, sold the two vans, got a

truck and then eventually, just before I know it, you would have had like

twelve trucks and we were flying, you know, but. Uh, no looking

back. And now looking back. So the australian part,

we just. I don't think we just came by chance, years ago

and we shipped some stuff by air freighter, if I remember right. It

was two Dubai and it went kind of smoothly. And I thought,

this is something that we were able to do, you know. Yeah, that was it,

really. And we just started advertising. Yeah. And so

28 years in business, is that right? Or 28 years. Show me age

now. Oh, look, experience.

So, I suppose, look, there's loads of things we could talk about and to some

extent, we want to kind of, I suppose, lend the discussion

to the people who maybe are in the middle or about to embark on a

move. And I'm conscious that you probably deal with

people from numerous locations. One of the things that comes up,

particularly, I suppose, for people who are maybe coming to Ireland, from

the UK or from Australia, or from locations where they drive on the same side

of the road of us, would be the importation of a car into Ireland.

Talk us through that process, what it looks like, and I suppose

specifically with reference to the fact that Ireland's one of the few places in the

world that has a vehicle registration tax like we do, so people won't be

familiar with that and the things they need to navigate. Yeah. So if,

basically, if you're bringing a car into the country, say, Australia, you've

got to own that car for a minimum of six months before you ship the

car. And once you have your registration certificate, your

insurance proof insurance and proof of

purchase, and they're all in your own name dated over six

months, you're moving home on a permanent basis, then you'd be entitled

to VRT exemption for that vehicle. And just to kind

of frame that, for anybody who's listening to this,

VRT is a tax that's applied to the market

value of the car as determined by the revenue commissioners. That's right, yeah.

It's a very high percentage. I'm not familiar with the exact percentage, but

I think it's normally in around the 20% mark, isn't it?

Generally, and it's big money. If you have an expensive car, it can be very

expensive. Plus you'll pay your 23% VAT

on your import and 10% duty. So you've

got. Going to pay VAT duty, then you're going to have VRT when you go

to re register your vehicle. Yeah. Very expensive. Yeah. So it's very. It's

worth, like if you. If you have a car, you know, wait, that extra couple

of months before you head home rather than trying to get it home, you only

over three or four months, you know, and the. Paperwork that you referenced

there. So that's the paperwork someone needs to have on file so that when they

bring the car into the country they're not going to get hit for the VRT.

Is there any other conditions when they come back in relation to the car that

need to be met so that they don't get hit? Um, VRT command, you need

to try and get yourself hold of a certificate of conformity,

a CoC certificate, and it shows the output, the emissions

output on your vehicle. And that is very important because

if you don't have that, you will get hit with the high tax bracket

on your road tax, your yearly road tax. Where'd you get that certificate from,

Damien? It's very hard to get it in Australia and everybody seems to seem

to have problems with it, but the main dealer should be able to

supply that to you, you know. Okay, yeah, but you could

be paying 1200 euro tax on a high, you know, engine, big

engine compared to the low, you know, if you had that cert, you'd only pay

a few hundred quid, you know. Wow. Okay. So even when you get back,

having your paperwork in place can mean that once you've got the car to the

country, the insurance is lower. Very important. Yeah. So

then if you're moving home, like, there's a lot of paperwork you need to prove

that you're moving home, you need to have cessation of employment. So a letter from

your boss to say you've, you know, you've worked from

2010 to 2020 and you're now moving home, you need

to prove that you've sold your house or your lease is up, some utility bills,

bank statements, these are the things they look for. Like to get your, your

VRT exemption, you know, you've got to prove you, you've been living

abroad and you're moving home in a permanent basis. Okay.

And this is all paperwork. At what point is this paperwork

presented or required? Well, we ask you for that

probably two weeks, maybe two, three weeks before the container save

comes in, the container arrives into Dublin. We would request all

this, give you a list of paperwork. You send us on the paperwork, we

complete the application and get it presented to the

customs and then if they want anything we just come back to. Try and get

across the board. I think as well, there's a requirement to retain

the VRT exemption, that you must hold onto the car for a period of time

after you come back to Ireland. It's twelve months as far as I know. Is

that right? Twelve months. You can't sell that car twelve months. You

have to have it in the country and you can't sell it within the twelve

months. Yeah. Now if you moved home, you can bring another car

home within twelve months of you moving to Ireland. So you can go

and, you know, if you've three, four cars in Australia and you have the right

paperwork for that, you know, the purchase, the registration

and the insurance, you're entitled to bring them four cars in under

VRT exemption. Any Mokshire enthusiasts listening to that are

probably rubbing their hands together in glee considering the second

hand car market in Ireland is expensive at the moment. Yeah. We've had a

motorbike collect. A guy collected motorbikes before, like, he probably had

about 20 motorbikes, but he's entitled to bring them in under VRT

and get his VRT exemption on them because they're his property, you know, and he

had all the backup paperwork. So the value there as well, I think

is, you know, having you guys be able to even just list out

that paperwork, you know, there's three or four things there that people are able to

go and ask and get. And so your service would extend

to the shipping of the car and getting the car, I suppose, on the ground

in Ireland as needed. Absolutely. We get it cleared clearing

and then we, you know, we bring it to your house. So we unload it

at the depot and, and that's it. Then you deal with the VRT office

yourself for your registration. The other thing I'd say to you is within,

yeah, like I said, the twelve months. Within twelve months you've got to have all

your, even your household furniture, they'll tax you on that after twelve months if you

don't get it in on time. Like. So you could have all desks and

chairs and sofas, but you bring that in and it goes over your twelve months.

You pay that, Julian, so you kinda get hit with you've paid it all

your taxes already, now you're gonna pay them again. So,

yeah, it's an area that really needs to be kind of pulled

through in terms of, I suppose, for people who are not coming

back from Australia to say exactly what you just said applies to somebody coming from

the UK. Is that right? Same thing. Because, yeah, the UK is not

in the EU anymore, so, you know, you might as well be coming back from

Australia. And the UK is the same rules. We don't do a lot of them

from the UK to be honest. We kind of focus more on Canada, Australia,

the US. We do a majority of stuff from. You know,

talk me through from the first phone call. Let's focus on a client in the

US or Canada who's planning to come back. What's the process if they

get in contact with you guys or with any relocation provider, for that

matter? Yeah, so they normally, somebody would get contact with us. We. They'd ask

us, you know, people having a clue part, half the time, like, they'd be like,

you know, if this is the first time, I haven't a clue. I need advice.

And so there's different options. You know, you could say that

the most expensive option is to have a crew go in and pack up all

your. Your belongings. They go into your kitchen. They pack all your delft. That's

the most expensive part. Then they take it away, and they load on the container,

ship it over, then air guys on this side would do the

same, bring it to your house, unload into your residence, and unpack

for you. But that is a. It can be very expensive. So we give

most people the option to, uh, load the container themselves. So

we could drop a container to your residence, you know, put a 20 foot container,

44, and you load it yourself. And. Yeah, we just ship it

back over here. We bring it to your residence, and you unload it yourself, and

it can. It can be half the price. And it's. It's not a. It's not

brain science, you know, to do a job like that. You know, anyone can load

it, you know? Okay, so you ask a couple of your friends or people who

owe you a favor. Exactly. Yeah. In terms of getting it

through, then. So what kind of paperwork are people giving you,

then, if. Let's say that person goes, yeah, can't really afford maybe

to get someone to kind of come in and pack my delve. I'll load it,

and then I'll see it the other side at wherever I want it. In Ireland.

What paperwork are they giving you so you can clear it? So they just got

to give us an inventory. So just keep a list

of everything you're putting in it, send us the inventory along with all the backup

paper that we need for any shipment, which, you know, the

proof of residency and Ireland and proof of end of

employment in Australia or Canada. It's the same, really. You

just loading yourself, you know, and what in turn.

Okay, so if I go, I'm thinking that you're standing there, right, in your inventory.

What are you not meant to bring in? This is important. Okay. So

alcohol. There's one thing, alcohol. There's a limit to the alcohol,

and it's more or less, you know, if you're coming off the airplane, you can

only bring a small amount in. So that's all you can bring in. A lot

of people have their. The cabinets full of, you know, half own open bottles.

And so, yeah, you have to be careful because if you bring in

too much alcohol, you get taxed on. And we had. We had a lady

there coming from Canada. She had the cheap canadian wine.

Six boxes she put on a list. We never noticed at the time, but

when it came in, the customs pulled it to. Had to do an

import declaration for it. And the cost of the vaT, the jury. And for us

to do declaration, which was a few quid, was more than what the bottles of

wine was worth. Which, you know, we had it the other

way when we were in Australia. Friends of ours came out from Ireland.

Now, obviously, bear in mind, australian border force are a different animal, I

would say, compared to the irish one. Yes, absolutely. But

they mistakenly put a bottle of. A couple of bottles of

whiskey, paddy whiskey, into their boxes going out to Australia. And

I think it delayed them actually getting their container

delivered for about something ridiculous, like six weeks. It just

impounded or something went terribly wrong. So just little things to be aware

of there, you know, be careful what. You'Re kind of even sending stuff to

Australia. People moving to Australia, they highlight on their

lists the outdoor stuff or Christmas decorations. If you have a

Christmas tree, they'll pull it to see is there acorns in it? There's

acorns in it. They want to dispose of them or they want to analyze

them. But there's one woman, she won acorn. I think they wanted a few hundred

dollars to, and it was false. She said if she convinced it was false, you

know, and they wanted a few hundred dollars to analyze it, like.

So maybe this is part of the process. But one thing that I know we

did when we were coming back from Australia, and this is a shameless

plug, but we're not getting paid for it. We used you guys and you were

fantastic. And from beginning to end, it was really, really good with the container we

brought back. But what we did was, was you

have an inventory list, but you cross reference it to a box number.

So on your inventory list, box one contains x, Y and Z. And the reason

is, at least then, if it does get pulled, you know what book boxes are

being pulled out because our friend. Now I know this is probably unlikely,

and actually, you're a better place to answer that. How frequently do things get

stopped? Because that's the next question people will have is, okay, this sounds like. Yeah,

it's kind of, it's kind of look at a draw. You know, if the

paperwork's in order, customers will be happy with it. They'll just clear it. Right?

Yeah. So if you have, you know, work tools on your, on your

inventory, if you're bringing in work tools, you can bring in garden tools, you

can bring in the, you know, the normal household tools that we all have, the

little Sanders and the drill. But anything work related to

big toolbox, you have to pay vat and duty on them at the import. They'll

pull the container if that's on your list. Wow. So you have to pay

VAT and duty on it. And they don't really stop to very, you know, once

in a blue moon, we get, you know, we probably have one stopped for a

check. You know, how, what's the demarcation between. These

are tools for my shed where, because I like to go out and kind of,

you know, is there any guidance there, like, in terms of, well, your shed tools?

Like, you know, you've got your gen, your normal shed tools, your rakes

and your forks and your, you can bring in right, on lawnmowers. You can bring

in normal lawnmowers. You can bring in jet skis, quads,

once you've owned all them over six months. But it's work tools. You have the

big toolboxes. You know,

that's, you know, if it's on your list, you're going to be taxed on it.

Okay. Yeah. So that's really good information.

Do you find, then what do people do generally? Do they sell

some stuff? Do they bring it back? What? Yeah, some people

do. Some people ship in the tools, but, yeah, you know,

people do pay tax on the tools. Like, yeah, yeah. It's just something to

be aware of, isn't it? Kind of sussing. Sussing it out. Tools are the

trade. That's what they call it. What do you, what

advice do you give to people, Damien, who, and I know

it's obviously going to be specific if you're working with individual people, but, like, if

your people are listening to this and they're thinking of sending the container back, what,

what would you say to them in terms of advice? You know, often it

comes, should I bring, what are the questions we see? Like, should I bring my

furniture back? You know, obviously you can't answer that, but what advice do you give

people some. Some people do like furniture, you have to

think, especially coming from the states, the houses here are much smaller.

Like, there was one house in particular in Dublin, and we

delivered a load to her house was a two or three bedroom house, but it

was a terraced house, and she brought back. I mean, I was there on

that job that day. I went with the lads. But you couldn't move in the

house. Like, there was nowhere to put stuff. But she insisted the stuff went in.

And I don't know what she's doing with it in the end, like. But it

was absolutely way too much. Like, the sofas are too

big for, you know, for the rooms here, you know? And they obviously didn't. Look

at that. You got to think, like, how big is your house going to be?

You know, what kind of sofa am I bringing back? Do I need this? Do

I need that? Some of that stuff you could buy here again, you know, rather

than paying shipping, you know? Yeah. And don't forget then, if you're bringing big

furniture, you might only need a 20 foot container. But I've got two, you know,

two suites of furniture that I wanted to bring home that's going to run you

into a 40 foot container. So is it worth, you know, is it worth paying

the extra couple of grand for when you can, you know, you could probably buy

it. Boy, sweet. Here, you know, be cheaper and just take a 20 home. Can

people share containers? They do. We. Yeah, we do the consolidated

containers all the time, like, two people. There's nothing wrong with. You want

the ship home. But look, I've only got half a load. We don't have that

much, but my friend up the road wants to move home, too. You two go

together and split the costs so they could. The price of that would be much

the same as you doing on your own, you know? Mm hmm. And the other

one is that we do shared containers. We do them a lot, actually. And,

you know, if you have two or three suitcases, we can take them. On board

like extras, ones you're not bringing on your flight. Yeah, two

suitcases. We only charge 250 euro to depot. So,

I mean, I know our competitors are charging for 650 euro,

you know, or 450 euro, so. Sorry, 250 euro from

Australia to Ireland. From Australia into Ireland. So

you drop them at the depot and we take them over to

airplace and we charge 250 for that. Wow,

that's fantastic. Which is nothing, really, compared, you know, compared

to competitors, you know, compared to. What an airline would charge you. It's

nothing. So I have all my favorite dresses and

my grand, my lot, you know, my grandmother's favorite brooch in

my suitcase. Yeah. How long do I have to wait before

it gets to me? Oh, yeah. Most

containers, whether they're shared or not, take, you know, average eight to

ten weeks. We say sometimes they can run to twelve. It depends on

the situation. And, you know, if they're busy in Singapore, it

might not make that vessel and it gets held up to the next one. Or,

you know, same in Rotterdam on the feeder vessel will be waiting for it to

come over. But twelve weeks is kind of worst case.

Yeah, I say eight to ten weeks. You know, I remember

when we were waiting for our container and I think we had a tracking, we

had the name of the ship it was on and we could actually track

where the stuff was. So once you get here, you're going to have some indication

of for somebody who's maybe going into a rental. And I suppose, you know, people

coming back to Ireland from Ireland aren't going to be shocked to hear this. But,

you know, in Ireland, a lot of rentals are furnished. You know, some people

listening might not know that. So there's not always a need to actually bring a

lot of furniture with you if you're planning to rent when you get here. In

terms of looking at, I suppose, the things that are

listed on your website then, as well, in terms of, like, the main

things that you do, it's basically an end to end service, isn't it? If

people want to pick up their life and move it, what they really need to

do is contact you guys to get advice from the

very start to the very end. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know,

how do I get my car into the country? What do I

pack? It's the whole thing. Yeah, see, we can do it. Like

I said, we can do the whole pack up. If you've got a car or

you've got, you know, all your phones, that we can do full pack up for

you. That's not a problem. But I always give people the option to

self load and save themselves a lot of money, you know, is there.

This is just a side question. How does the insurance on all that work? Is

that part of the service? So, yeah, there's another myth on

Facebook, obviously, on the pages. So what happens

there? Insurance. You can be insured. If you self load the container, you can

still get cover, all risk cover. We can get you covered on it.

Some companies are saying you can't, we can't cover you. Maybe they can't cover you,

but we can get you covered. There's three different options on the insurance cover,

depending on, you know, what exactly. But you're better off just with the auto risk,

to be honest with. You probably pay about 2% or 2.5%

of the total value of your goods. You just give it a good

inventory and we send that to the insurance company

and we get a quote done up and that's it. Then we give you. We

definitely, 100%, you can be covered, all risk.

And cars can be insured. Self loaded cars. You can still get

insurance. Just. We just need photographs of the car. Before you

ship it and literally shipped from the point it gets to the

port in Australia to when it gets to yours. So it gets into our depot?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And just so people know, where is your

depot? Yeah, we're based in Ashbourne and County Mead. So it's just outside

Dublin. So if somebody doesn't have a delivery direct to their door, they can save

a few bob by. By driving up. Save yourself a few hundred quid on a

delivery to the country. You know, if you have your car, you want it in

Galway, probably going to cost you 300 quid. Just come up, get a lift

up and drive it home. If people are. Because I'm just

thinking in terms of saving money or being sensible, generally,

if people are packing containers, is there any guidance you give

them in terms of things to do to prevent damage in transit

or what are the general things you say to people when they're

loading? Yeah, generally, just box your stuff. Well,

pack boxes. Just, you know, put plenty of bubble wrap around your

tvs and just pack the container tight. Then, you know,

don't believe in gaps everywhere where it's going to tilt or fall, you know,

and then you just get a few straps. I know, I remember when

we were leaving Perth, I distinctly remember my

son, who was like, he was about two and a half at the time, watching

Brian pack, my husband pack the car we were bringing back

and literally shoving duvets and things into it. So there was

actually, like, the amount of stuff you could put into the car before you put

it onto the container, and therefore it's going to be in the car while it's

on the high seas. So when it got to us, it was perfect, because. Perfect,

yeah. So anything that needs to be kind of protected or, you know, might be

likely to get damaged in cold or damp. Most people,

when you're packing a house with a car, all the

goods, the person effects will get loaded in first, to a certain extent, say,

halfway and then you would get the ratchet straps and a couple of sheets of

ploy and use that as a wall, you know, ratchet strap up. So

that's even on our website, we put up, on our facebook, we put

up some jobs and you'd see where, you know, there's a lot of wood there

holding all that up together. And then the car gets run, drove in then, and

shopped the car down and that's, that's it. Then the containers

don't really get thrown around. When you think about it like it's a crane,

you know, it's. It's going to lift it, it's going to put on a stack,

it's going to, you know, take it off the stack, put on the ship so

it's not like it's getting thrown around, you know. Yeah. It's. It's the

person. The people walking around the ship might feel the swell, but nothing in the

actual container will. Yeah. On the road maybe, you know, the trucks driving around

corners and all. That's different. You know, you're going to have some movement, obviously.

Tell us this, actually, because we're talking very much in the context of ships. You

guys advertise air freight. Like, how frequently is that done? I would imagine that's

obviously in a different cost bracket, but that's just an assumption. Yeah. Air

freight is crazy money. Like, we doing some, we

do some. We don't do a lot of it. We used to do a lot

of it, but it's very expensive. Yeah. The last one, I remember

there probably last week from the states, you know, she

lady paid thousands to get a, you know, a couple of cubic meters or whatever

it was at the time. I'm not sure, but it's very expensive. You want to

really want that in a hurry, you know, to pay those costs. I

don't think this is a service you offer, but I'm going to ask just in

case you have somebody who you recommend. What if you want to bring your family

pet with you? Do you guys do any of that or. We don't do

pet transport, but there are companies that do it. We

always recommend a company in Perth.

I think it's all care, pet transport. And they're very good

people. You know, there's a few. I know there's two or three people talk about

and. Yeah, you know, yourself, recommendations is the way to go. So, you know,

if someone does a good job for you, you recommend them, you go with it,

like, you know. Yep. And I think that's the piece here.

Is that when people pick up the phone to ring

you. They've made a decision like they're going. And the next

bit and how it goes really matters because when

you get to Ireland, if someone tells you, oh, you know, you know, such and

such has happened or something's gone missing or whatever it is, like that's,

that's. You're kind of in trouble at that stage. So having a reliable

service is, or even people to pick up the phone and ask

questions of is really important. I would say it is, absolutely. And you know what?

I get calls. I got a call there. Yeah, it was this morning,

actually. His son is moving out Australia, but he's insistent. I haven't

quoted him, haven't done anything, but he said, well, we're going with you guys no

matter what. Like, so. Because all the reviews and, you know,

people recommend and he's just adamant his son said, no,

dad, I'm going with these guys. And that's it. So things like

that is brilliant. Like, I just, you know, and then you hear all different people's

different stories when they're moving home, which I love hearing all the different, you know,

reasons and stories and, you know, you have a bit of crack and, you know,

talking to people and. Yeah, brilliant. It's, it's, it's

a great area to work in and I think probably like ourselves, you've probably

met some interesting people and interesting stories along the

way. I have, yeah. Absolutely. What we'll

do is we will drop, obviously, all your details into

the show notes so people can reach out to you. And what's the best way

for people to contact you, Damien? If they have questions or they're not sure if

they need your service or. So questions can just pop an

email. There's loads of different ways you can contact us.

WhatsApp, you know, you can contact us email info at mason

transport.com, Facebook. You know, there's

various different ways. So I think as well, if people let you know that they've

listened to you on here and heard you on the podcast, you'll,

I'm sure you'll give them five star treatment. They get six, six

star. They get the Stephanie discount.

Thank you so much for coming on with us. Look, I think we could probably

talk all day, and I know even just around the whole topic of cars, it's

just such an area of interest for people. And I think some of it's just

around kind of debunking the myths that are out there, you

know, well meaning people. Sometimes false information can sometimes

be spread. The other thing to remember as well is we

sponsor the likes of Central Coast Ga with the

jerseys. You know, like we. You know, and there's a. You know,

there's a few different. In part. We sponsor a mother and baby group, and

there's different. Another guy's drift car, and he's out there

joining around with a name on it. Right. So we kind of, you know, we're

doing this a long, long time. Like I say, 1996. We're, you

know, working with the Urs abroad, and you just keep. That's what we do.

And, you know, we look after people like that. You want, you know, not

saying I'm going to sponsor. Sponsor everybody. You're going to get

a lot of requests from mother and baby groups after this. Yeah. Well, perhaps we

do a mother and baby part. We do the Central Coast GAA. We do

some jerseys there, and it's great to see the name. And they're all running around

the field, you know? Isn't it, Joss? Yeah. Everyone loves GAA. Yeah. Don't

they? Definitely. Okay. Well, on that note, thank you so

much for coming on and talking to us. It's been really, really useful.

And. Yeah, look, you know, I'm sure people listen to this

for a long time to come, but if people have other topics they'd like us

to talk about, they can drop us a note, and we could always report another

session if there's areas that people would like us to touch on that we haven't

got to today. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thanks, Damian.

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