# Bringing in our Jewellery, Car to New Zealand



## kvsr (Jul 25, 2019)

Hi,
We are moving to New Zealand this year on Resident Visa. I have few below queries. Request you to please clarify:

1) Is there any restriction on bringing gold ornaments with bought receipts to New Zealand? I have searched for the same and got the below info which is saying there is no need to declare our jewellery. Is this below correct?

"If you're bringing in more than NZ$700 worth of goods (not including your clothes, jewellery and toiletries), you'll need to declare it as you may have to pay duty fees or GST."

2) Bringing 6 year old Car to New Zealand seems not worth it as per the information provided on few posts. Any suggestions here?

3) We are 3 of us. So, can we bring in $30,000 cash ($10,000 per person) so that it will help us in settling down until one of us gets a job there in NZ? What do you suggest?

Thanks and Regards,
Venkata


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## escapedtonz (Apr 6, 2012)

So long as the goods aren't classed as restricted or worse then you are free to bring whatever you like. There are no restrictions as such.
ALL goods that you bring to NZ should have been owned by you for a minimum period of 12 months and, if asked you should be able to provide evidence that proves this. If you haven't owned things for the minimum 12 months then you should declare it and pay any import duty and GST on it.
Your shipping company or International Removalists are experts in this field and will advise you how to proceed with anything and everything you wish to bring.
We didn't declare anything.
We were advised to bring whatever we wanted (so long as legal and not restricted goods obviously) and both old and new, owned for over 12 months and owned for less. We were advised to destroy all evidence that proved we hadn't owned an item longer than 12 months - i.e. destroy the receipt and to open the box, rough it up a little, take it out of the packaging, throw away the instructions etc etc so it wasn't blatantly obvious that we hadn't owned an item or items at least 12 months. In all honesty NZ Customs don't really care so long as you aren't trying to import things that are illegal, hazardous or restricted. They didn't even bother to check our shipping container, BUT there's always a chance of it happening.
Unfortunately you cannot do this with a vehicle as there's a certificate of ownership etc so you can't dodge the import duty and GST if you haven't owned a vehicle for at least 12 months.

1. No there is no need. We didn't declare any jewellery.
2. I wouldn't bother with the car. It's a hassle to get through all the red tape and it'll cost you a couple grand that you'll never get back. There's many decent vehicles here and yes they are more expensive than what you'll be used to but everyone is in the same boat so to speak. I'm glad we didn't bring any of our vehicles. It would have been too costly and unlikely we'd have kept them long and probably difficult to on-sell being a European import built for the European market.
There are no vehicles built in NZ. All vehicles are imported from overseas. Some are imported partly built and completed here.
There are basically two types - an import built to NZ spec for NZ use which are called "NZ New" and then there are all the other imports which are built for the nation and market where they were manufactured and have been imported here for use on NZ roads. Majority of these are from Japan then Korea, Singapore, Australia and a small percentage European imports. 
I've had all manner of cars in NZ. Been here 7.5 years and i think I'm on my 9th or so....who's counting!!!
We've currently got a Japanese import 2007 Mitsi Pajero Exceed X Long Wheel Base 7 seater built in Japan for the Japanese market. Luckily we had the media system / navigation converted to English so there is no Japanese writing or spoken instructions anywhere which a lot of the Jap imports suffer from and an NZ New 2017 Peugeot 2018 built for the NZ market in France then shipped to the main dealer here for sale as a new car.
3. That is so old school. Why would you travel with so much cash ?
We only held enough cash to last us the journey which we lengthened to 10 days so we could stay over in the United Arab Emirates and Australia en route to NZ and that wasn't a huge amount as we still had the ability to use our UK bank cards or UK credit cards. The rest of our money was electronically transferred to our NZ bank account the month prior to arrival so it was ready and waiting for us.
You can open a bank account in NZ while still overseas and transfer funds in to it.


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## kvsr (Jul 25, 2019)

Hi escapedtonz,
Thanks a lot for taking time and replying in detail. It is of so much help.

Thanks and Regards,
Venkata


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