Hello all,

I am sorry to open another discussion into this subreddit regarding the buying a car in Switzerland vs import them from Germany, but I wanted to share my understanding and possibly, evaluate some pros and cons on both sides that I am missing or not considering.

First of all, I just want to take as example the car that I wanted to buy, which is a german brand, I prefer not to specify which brand and model, but:

BUYING IN SWITZERLAND
– New price in CH: 76.320 CHF
– Possibly some fleet rabatt (?) depending from where you work, but let's consider 14%, which was the best I could get without fleet discounts: 65.635 CHF
– Vignette + Transport/making it ready (-590 CHF): 65.045 CHF

  • Included: 3 years of warranty EU/SWISS + 10 years of services (NOT liquids, brake, brake fluids and other consumables parts)

IMPORTING FROM GERMANY
– New price in DE: 65.959€
– Price without VAT (19%, -13077.9): 55.428€
– Discount 14% (I put 14% to be in line with the swiss one, you can get it with carwow.de, but you can easily get 16/17% if you ask for better) (-8.258.8): 47.169€
– Services 5 years/60k km (all inclusive, liquids, brake, brake fluids and all consumables) without VAT (+2.140€): 49.310€
– Transport/making it ready: (+874€): 50.183€
– Converting 50.183€ to CHF (0.97 conversion rate, which is also a bit high in my opinion at the moment): 48.677 CHF
– Adding Weight tax (+300) + 4% Car import tax (1.947): 50.625 CHF
– Adding 8.1% VAT calculated on previous 50.625 (I don't know why they tax VAT on 4% tax, but they calculated like this at the customs office) (+3.943): 54.567 CHF
– Adding Co2 Tax, depending on car weight and emission, for my model is (+2745.5): 57.313 CHF

  • Included 3 years of warranty EU/SWISS + 5 years of services (all inclusive in all Europe but not in Switzerland)

Considering that I calculated the german car import with 0,97 rate (was 0.92/0.93 back 4 months ago) and that imho they calculated VAT over 4% tax, and you can still get additional 2% of discount, I am pretty confident that overall german price estimate is fair if not a bit overpriced. Probably the only thing missing is the temporary plate and the insurance for 30 days, which I don't see very expensive.

The difference for THE SAME IDENTICAL CAR finally is 7.732 CHF

Do you think it is worth it?

by Stizzo

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