# Driving to Spain with van full of used furniture



## Sam I am (Mar 7, 2021)

Hi everyone!
Finally I am getting to make the trip after many delays. We will be driving over a van full of old used furniture etc to furnish our flat in Castillo. Anyone got any wisdom they would like to pass on that I may have missed in my research. What requirements, taxes, Covid laws etc We will be going from Portsmouth to Bilbao. Very excited and nervous! Thanks in advance!!!


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## Roy C (Sep 29, 2012)

We sent boxes of personal stuff (books, clothes and kitchen items , not new) over this year with a man and a van, He needed to know the number of boxes for the paperwork and he said they were very hot on that but we didn't have to pay taxes on the stuff.


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## blondebob (Aug 16, 2019)

Roy C said:


> We sent boxes of personal stuff (books, clothes and kitchen items , not new) over this year with a man and a van, He needed to know the number of boxes for the paperwork and he said they were very hot on that but we didn't have to pay taxes on the stuff.


Any cost regarding Customs Paperwork


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## Roy C (Sep 29, 2012)

blondebob said:


> Any cost regarding Customs Paperwork


No, we just paid for the transit of the boxes, which was just 3 cubic metres. I'm guessing because it was all our own stuff ie secondhand, there was no taxes to pay.


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## Max Rigger (Aug 2, 2020)

Is it worth taking old furniture? You can buy your beds/sofa's/fridges et al used and new easy enough in Spain. I can understand taking antique furniture and smaller higher value items but is it worth the extra cost of shipping large bits and pieces you can get easily enough?


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## Sam I am (Mar 7, 2021)

Max Rigger said:


> Is it worth taking old furniture? You can buy your beds/sofa's/fridges et al used and new easy enough in Spain. I can understand taking antique furniture and smaller higher value items but is it worth the extra cost of shipping large bits and pieces you can get easily enough?


For us I think it is as we are taking a rescued kitchen over too and won’t have time to source stuff when there 
Thanks for asking though. I am in so many minds of doubt but hopefully making the correct decision 🙏🏽


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## Max Rigger (Aug 2, 2020)

I just bought a place in Spain, its a fixer up semi rural property that I won't be able to work on because of work for a couple of months. That said last week I cleared the guttering to stop water ingress into one of the bedrooms. An easy job but...I had no ladder so to carry out the easy job I had to go and buy a ladder. 

This got thinking about what I need to take out there and its tools. I'll drive over and pack my camper with tools so I can do a lot of the work myself but I'll be buying a lot of furniture as locally is I can to support local firms and the rest will be a mix of stuff from Amazon.es and the second hand stores in Alicante. I'll be using local people for the big work like rendering inside and out, couple of walls to come down, full rewire, new floors, heating system etc and I'll do things like fitting a new kitchen and bathrooms.

I'll lay in underfloor heating when the floors are replaced even if they're not hooked up for a while; anyone here using ground sourced heating? I've got around 18000sqm of land so have the room to go geothermal as and when I can afford it. I will have a backup solar system which should run my radio shack easily enough and could be used to supply some power for refrigeration/TV/Computers to the main house if needed, I need to look into the rules and regs on that, anyone here got a solar setup?


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## ccm47 (Oct 15, 2013)

Nothing to say about solar panels, sorry.
One thing that my OH found was very useful to bring over was a Screwfix catalogue, which he then took down to the local ferreteria . As they say a picture is worth a 1000 words though these days maybe having their app would be sufficient. It also helped extend his vocabulary.


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

Just heard a horror story about a couple driving a van-load of personal belongings to Spain through France. On landing in France (Roscoff) they were given the third degree by an officious jobsworth who wanted to know every detail of what they had, and gave them dire warnings about what would happen to them if they were later found to be concealing something that should have had import duty paid on it. Hopefully just a one-off but be warned and carry an inventory!


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## Tellus (Nov 24, 2013)

Sam I am said:


> For us I think it is as we are taking a rescued kitchen over too and won’t have time to source stuff when there
> Thanks for asking though. I am in so many minds of doubt but hopefully making the correct decision 🙏🏽


AFAIK used stuff, personal belongings etc. are moving goods and free of customs duties if it 's min. 12 months yours,
even vehicles.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

When I moved to Spain (the second time, from a non-EU country) everything had to be itemised and valued for the customs declaration. When it arrived, Spanish customs wanted to charge import duties because they weren't satisfied that we had been legally tax resident in the country we came from.
It turned out that the moving agent had used our tax returns as the evidence of tax residency, but because they were not in English or Spanish they simply rejected them as evidence.
Eventually after a few days, a letter from my employer got the belongings through customs but the storage charge of the container in the port was still charged for the extra days IIRC.
I assume the same level of inventory and valuation is required when bringing belongings from the UK now, so I am not surprised if people are having trouble.


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## alpinist (Feb 8, 2009)

Overandout said:


> I assume the same level of inventory and valuation is required when bringing belongings from the UK now, so I am not surprised if people are having trouble.


I'd suspect you're right, depending on the official on the day too of course. But I wonder how attentively the Spanish would look at a Spanish-registered van driving through the shed at port?
Curious thing I found when moving back to the UK in 2019 was the moving agent said there's no VAT Spain-UK, but there is UK-Spain. I didn't get into the details, but it might just be where the firm is based rather than direction of travel.


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