Hundreds of passenger and luxury cars registered as vans in Estonia
As of July 1 this year, 19 Porsche Cayennes, BMW X5s and X6s, and various Land Rover models were registered in Estonia as vans to save on taxes, Eesti Ekspress reported.
The weekly writes that one common tactic is temporarily converting passenger cars into vans by removing the rear seats and installing a partition for inspection, then restoring the original interior after registration.
Transport Administration data shows hundreds of ordinary passenger models, including Škoda Octavias, Toyota Land Cruisers, Audi Q7s and Porsche Cayennes, are registered as vans.
Another scheme exploits tax breaks for eight- and nine-seat minibuses by registering vehicles with extra seats that may later be removed, significantly lowering the registration fee.
Some buyers also avoid paying the registration tax by leaving the previous owner listed in the vehicle register while becoming only the primary user, although the annual vehicle tax still remains the owner's responsibility.
Authorities have also observed owners reweighing vans and pickups to adjust their power-to-weight ratio and qualify for lower tax rates. In some cases, heavier versions of the same vehicle, equipped with more options, can incur substantially lower registration taxes because of the way the tax thresholds are structured.
Used car seller Mobile Autokeskus manager Silver Havamaa argues these examples show the tax system contains rigid thresholds and loopholes that encourage optimization rather than reflecting real vehicle use. He also contends that powerful plug-in hybrids receive disproportionately low registration taxes because the tax formula heavily favors their official CO₂ emissions.
The Ministry of Finance maintains that emphasizing CO₂ emissions in the tax calculation is intended to encourage the purchase of more environmentally friendly vehicles.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski
Source: Eesti Ekspress
