Horror of horrors, I finally had to bite the bullet and buy a new car in Denmark!
In case you didn't know, this place has the most unpleasant taxation on buying a car in the entire world. Whatever a car costs in your home country, I can almost guarantee it will cost 2-3 times as much here since vehicle duty is a whopping 170% and then 25% MOMs is added on top (a tax on a tax).
Tragic thing is that WITHOUT the taxes Danish cars are really cheap. In fact, a lot of internet car importers buy their cars from Denmark and then add the duty on applying to the country the car is being imported into.
Anyhow, with 3 kids and a fourth on the way, our 12 year-old Volvo saloon broke down again and we decided that was it.
So fastforward and we now have a brand new Fiat Doblo 7 seater. Tragically, it cost the equivalent of about £18,500 whereas the identical model in the Uk is £10,500. Every other people carrier we looked at
My key tip here is that new cars in Denmark are, despite the prices, comparatively a bargain as against used cars. For example, a 6 or 7-year old Fiat Doblo still sells for 80,000 or 90,000 krone (about £8,000), and everyone knows the risks a used car of this age entails, plus, considering how damp a country Denmark is, cars do not tend to wear too well as the years progress. Dealers make very little profit on selling new cars - they hope to make their money from the servicing afterwards. Their profit margins on used cars are much bigger.
You can read more on buying and driving a car in Denmark here.
Yet again, it just shows who's really running the show and raking the money in here. The Government. Next time I see the usual bunch of drunks hanging around outside Føtex, at least I can feel that warm feeling inside of knowing that my money was spent on a good cause....
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2 comments:
That chopped off sentence was meant to say that every other people carrier in Denmark costs 250,000 krone or more.
If you want to go for something like VW Touran, expect to pay 450,000kr (£42,000)!!!!!!!!!!
I'm from argentina, and unfortunately it's very similar :-( We have very high taxes, VAT here is 21% on all sales and cars, electronics and consumer goods in general are double the price than in the US, which is outrageous, considering salaries in Argentina are much lower... We have a populist corrupt government that talks too much about redistribution of income while inflation keeps eating up our already low salaries... We also have a lot of people (mostly low class) who live on welfare and many of them refuse to work and surprise surprise!!! they are usually the ones who keep voting in these demagogues in power... Imports are heavily taxed so we get very little products from abroad and competitiveness is practically nonexistent, but the people here are so brainwashed and think those measures are fair because hey, it's about protecting hte local industry!!! FRom your descrption, I can see there are many similarities between Denmark and Argentina, much to my dismay.
Regards
Diego
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