While C210 and Peter would love to present Europe as a place with arbirary use of police power all over the place going after poor private pilots, this is definitely not the case.
I have flown to: England, France, Spain, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Morocco, Sweden, Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland.
Number of Ramp checks or check of airplane papers or licence: 0 (zero). (except for passing security at bigger airports)
N-regs are sometimes checked for good reason, because there have been many cases where airplane were imported (and if the an airplane is in Europe longer than 6 months it is considered imported) without the owner paying all import fees and taxes.
To my best knowledge only N-regs are checked for VAT. So why create problems and conspiracy theories all the time?
@ boscomantico: How many times have you been checked for VAT, flying your N-reg Cirrus all over the continent for 15 years? was that 28 countries?
Also this is not the USA. You win a legal battle and you do not pay for lawyers and court. That one is a first hand experience, and it was about $ 500.000. What did it cost me in the end? Nothing! (valid for Germany)
N-regs are sometimes checked for good reason, because there have been many cases where airplane were imported (and if the an airplane is in Europe longer than 6 months it is considered imported) without the owner paying all import fees and taxes.
Not true; many G-regs were imported from the USA and put on G without VAT paid.
valid for Germany
Exactly.
I have never been checked either, but does that stop discussion of this issue?
I can think of various reasons I have not been checked. One of them is that I just happen to not have attended fly-ins in certain countries. A fly-in will be a magnet for inspections. Also I don’t go anywhere really regularly.
Whenever I had a little time the last days I tried to research this topic (to write a small article about it for my website)… but wherever I looked, and whoever i asked I could not find one pilot of a EU-registered airplane that was ever checked for VAT. I also asked a friend who is a used aircraft dealer, besides beeing a LH captain, and he has never heard of such a case either.
That’s why I think that this is all blown completely out of proportion here.
PS: In the UK if you win in court you pay your legal fees yourself? In France? That would surprise me.
Peter wrote:
I can think of various reasons I have not been checked.
Just proves that ramp checks are nowhere near as prevalent as this thread seems to want to show …
Flyer59 wrote:
PS: In the UK if you win in court you pay your legal fees yourself? In France? That would surprise me.
In France, you can ask the judge to order the prosecution to pay “legal fees”, it’s called the Article 700, although it is not always granted, so no guarantee that you will be reimbursed if you successfully defend yourself.
That said, nobody seems to have picked-up on my earlier post that states that IF the French customs impound and immobilze your aircraft AND you successfully prove that all is in order, they must pay you to the tune of 10%/per month of the acfts value for the inconvenience !
Hey, they could confiscate my plane over the winter! Where do I have to land? ;-)) 10% per month is a really good additional income ;-)
Will it be hangared?
Which countries check import VAT paid before allowing an aircraft onto their registry?
AND you successfully prove that all is in order
How will you be doing that when you are stuck at some foreign airport?
Flyer59 wrote:
Hey, they could confiscate my plane over the winter! Where do I have to land? ;-)) 10% per month is a really good additional income ;-)Will it be hangared?
lol ! Well, you would have to arrange for the hangar yourself and then they will just put some fancy tape and a lead “seal” on the door handle 
Peter wrote:
Which countries check import VAT paid before allowing an aircraft onto their registry?
France, for sure. One small problem with that is they keep your original VAT receipt, so you don’t get it back.
For € 25.000 per month I can for the hangar. And I love the seal!
Sounds like a great business model :-)
