Import tax on a car in Cyprus

Source: Department of Customs and Excise, Republic of Cyprus. Vehicles from countries outside the EU.

The duty is charged on more than the car

The number customs works from is not the price on the invoice. It is the CIF value: Cost, Insurance and Freight. What the car cost you, plus what it cost to ship it, plus what it cost to insure it on the way.

Cyprus Customs puts it like this:

The import duty is calculated on the customs value, which includes the sum of the purchase cost plus the cost of transport and insurance (C.I.F. value = Cost + Insurance + Freight).

So a €22,000 car with €1,800 of shipping and insurance is not taxed on €22,000. It is taxed on €23,800. Freight is not a cost you pay alongside the tax. Freight is part of what gets taxed.

Then the VAT is charged on the duty

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the reason the arithmetic never matches the guess. VAT is not charged on the car. It is charged on the car plus the duty.

motor vehicles are subject to the standard VAT rate which is currently 19% and it is calculated on the taxable value which consists of the sum of the customs value and the import duty.

Follow the €23,800 through:

Now run the same car at 0% duty. VAT is 19% of €23,800, which is €4,522. Total to clear: €4,522.

The gap is €2,832.20, not €2,380. The duty costs you the duty, and then it costs you the VAT charged on the duty. That is why a 10 percent rate is really 11.9 percent of CIF. It also explains why the next section matters more than any other page on this site.

On 1 February 2026, the duty on Japanese cars went to zero

This is recent enough that almost nothing online has caught up with it, including the Cyprus Customs page itself, which was last updated in 2021.

The EU and Japan signed a trade agreement that came into force on 1 February 2019. It did not scrap the 10 percent car tariff overnight. It took it apart in eight equal annual steps. Every step fell on 1 February. The eighth and last one landed this year.

Source: EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, Annex 2-A, staging category B7. Official Journal L 330, 27.12.2018. Confirmed against the live EU tariff (TARIC) in 2026.

The same is true of British cars, and has been since 1 January 2021. The Brexit trade agreement gives zero duty on goods that originate in the UK or the EU.

Which sounds like the whole problem is solved. It is not, because of one word in both agreements: originate.

Where the car was built decides the bill

Almost everybody assumes the duty depends on where they bought the car, or where it was shipped from. It does not. It depends on where the car was manufactured. Nothing else.

The UK government states it about as plainly as it can be put:

The origin of the goods: is where they have been grown, produced, or manufactured. May not be the country where they are shipped or bought from.

Buying a car does not give it origin. Registering it does not. Driving it for three years does not. Putting it on a boat does not. Only building it does.

So the same 10 percent question splits four ways:

Read the third row again, because it is the expensive one. A Japanese car that spent a few years in Britain is not a British car. It never became one. It arrives in Cyprus as a Japanese-built car being shipped out of a country that has no trade agreement covering it, and it pays the full 10 percent, plus the 19 percent VAT on that 10 percent.

Why it does not just keep its Japanese rate

Because both agreements carry a rule that a car has to arrive more or less as it left. It cannot have been used, altered, or let loose outside customs control on the way. The EU-Japan agreement puts it this way:

An originating product declared for home use in the importing Party shall not have, after exportation and prior to being declared for home use, been altered, transformed in any way or subjected to operations other than to preserve them in good condition. Storage or exhibition of a product may take place in a third country provided that it remains under customs supervision in that third country.

A car that was imported into Britain, registered there, taxed there and driven there for three years fails that on both counts. It left customs supervision the day it was cleared, and it was used, which is rather more than keeping it in good condition.

So the Japanese route gives it nothing, because it stopped in Britain. And the British route gives it nothing, because it was never British. It falls between the two agreements and pays the standard rate.

This is the single strongest argument for buying Japanese cars in Japan rather than picking them up second-hand in Britain, and it got stronger on 1 February 2026.

Without the paperwork, the rate is 10 percent no matter where it was built

A Japan-built car does not get 0 percent because it is obviously Japanese. It gets 0 percent because someone proved it is Japanese, on paper, at the moment of clearing. No proof, no preference. The car pays 10 percent and nobody at the port will argue with you about where Toyota has its factories.

The proof is a statement on origin, and it is less intimidating than it sounds:

• The exporter writes it. They do not have to be the manufacturer. The European Commission says the exporter "can be any person (such as a producer or a trading company)". A Japanese exporter can issue it. Toyota does not need to be involved.
• It goes on the invoice or any commercial document. No signature. No stamp. No special form.
• For Japan there is no registration to join. The exporter puts their 13-digit Japanese Corporate Number on it. For Britain it is their GB EORI number.
• It is valid for 12 months.
• It can be made out after the fact, and a claim can be made up to three years after the car was imported.

That last point is worth knowing if you have imported a Japanese car since February 2026 and paid 10 percent on it.

What the exporter is signing up to is real, though. They are responsible for the statement being correct, and customs can come back and ask them to prove the car's origin in detail. That is why an exporter who does not routinely do this may simply decline, and the car then pays 10 percent for want of a piece of paper.

What you hand over at the port

Cyprus Customs asks for:

• An SAD, the customs declaration
• The purchase invoice
• The bill of lading, or the receipt for the freight
• The insurance policy, if the car was insured in transit
• For a used car, the original registration certificate from the country it came from
• For a new car, an EC Certificate of Conformity
• And to pay 0 percent instead of 10, the statement on origin

If the car is not cleared, it does not simply sit there. It goes into a customs warehouse, or it goes back out of the country.

Clearing customs is not registering the car

These are two different authorities and they are not talking to each other on your behalf. Customs takes the duty and the VAT and releases the car. Whether that car can then be registered and driven is decided by the Department of Road Transport, which has its own restrictions on cars from outside the EU.

Customs is blunt about the order to do this in:

importers are advised to contact the Department of Road Transport, prior to importing a motor vehicle so as to be informed if it can be registered in the Republic of Cyprus.

Read that again: prior to importing. It is possible to pay every cent of duty and VAT on a car and then discover you own an ornament. This is not a common outcome, but it is a real one, and it is the single best reason not to buy a car abroad on impulse.

Registration also brings its own annual bill, which has nothing to do with customs and is worked out from the car's CO2. We take that apart separately in the road tax guide, including the surcharge that can add €600 a year to an imported diesel for as long as you own it.

The cases that are not obvious

You are moving to Cyprus and bringing your own car

There is a relief for this, and it is genuinely worth having, but the conditions are strict and all of them apply at once. You must have lived outside the EU for at least 12 months. You must have owned and actually used the car for at least 6 months before you moved. You must bring it in within 12 months of arriving. And you cannot sell it, lend it or use it as security for 12 months afterwards without paying the duty you were let off.

Cyprus grants it for one car per person, and only to someone holding a valid driving licence. Customs also checks that you and the car were actually in the same country at the same time. This is a relief for people relocating. It is not a way to buy a car cheaply.

The car was built in the EU and is coming back

There is a route for goods returning to the EU within three years, in the state they left. It is not automatic and it is heavy on evidence: customs wants the original export declaration, matched to the exact car by VIN. An invoice will not do. And even where it works, it only removes the duty. The VAT still lands, because the VAT exemption only applies when the person re-importing the car is the same person who exported it, which for a dealer it never is.

You are importing an electric car

The duty story is identical: 10 percent standard, 0 percent with origin. Electric cars have no special tariff. Where they are different is afterwards, once the car is registered: an electric car pays €0 road tax in Cyprus, every year, permanently.