Recommendations for Malta VAT agents

[marcok]

Hi!
We're considering paying VAT on a new boat in Malta. We're looking to either pay the full amount at 18% or going down the 'setup of a Maltese company' route so we would pay less VAT. Note; we're Dutch citizens buying a newly built boat in France.

To keep things simple; we're not interested in the flag registration as we have that sort of covered (thanks to the input of those on this forum).

Therefore I'm looking for recommendations on Maltese agents that I could contact. Recommendations from first hand experiences are very much welcome!

Thanks to everyone contributing to this forum.

ps. I know there's a thread on "Malta agent VAT" but it ended up in a discussion on German and US citizenship. By starting a clean thread I hope to keep the searchability in tact for others with a similar question.

[marcok]

For documentation purposes as well as the fact the answer may be interesting to future readers, here's what we learned after talking to several Malta VAT agents.

There 2 routes to get a VAT Paid status in Malta:
1) Go there with a new boat and pay 18% VAT (which is lower than the 20% for France or 21% for the Netherlands)
2) Set up a maltese company and have it buy the boat. Effective VAT rate would be around 9% depending on the boats length.


Option 1 is still possible but does include some hassle and the boat needs to transfer ownership. Also you must sail directly to Malta to get things sorted. For us it we believe it doesn't justify the 2% difference between paying the French VAT (20%) and the Maltese (18%).

Option 2 is not interesting anymore for boats <€2.000.000 as the cost of setting up and maintaining the Maltese entity has increased so has the regulations.

We will buy the boat as private individuals and pay the VAT in France.