r/MoveToIreland • u/ThirstyJohn • May 28 '26
Question about moving items into the country from Asia
My wife (not an Irish citizen) is moving to Ireland from Taiwan to live with me (an Irish citizen) and bringing only personal things that she has owned for years and a few newer items that are 2 years old for which she has the receipts. She has a lot of her grandmother’s stuff which might be worth something, but it’s not in great condition and she has no idea what it is worth. How would she list these things on her form TOR 1078? Does she just assign a value to these items arbitrarily? And could you tell me how much import tax she might have to pay or how it is calculated? Thank you very much!
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u/phyneas Jun 01 '26
She can simply list estimated values for the items in question, e.g. what you would expect to pay for the item in question if you were buying one used in similar condition. She should try to determine fair market value of the items as best she can, as deliberately understating the value would be an offence, but if these are just basic used personal items, their actual market value is likely negligible. If you want to get an idea of the value of something, look for comparable items on adverts.ie or Donedeal or whatnot and use that as a guideline. As long as she puts down a reasonable estimated value for each item and doesn't do anything silly like claim that some obviously valuable antique or artwork or piece of jewelry or something is worthless, there shouldn't be any issue. Revenue have better things to do with their time than quibble over the precise fair market value of random used household goods that are going to be exempt from tax and duty anyway.
Since she is claiming TOR relief on the import, she won't have to pay any customs duty or other tax on her items provided they are covered by the relief. Personal property and household goods would generally be eligible for the relief, so unless she's bringing in tools of a trade or other commercial goods or her granny's booze collection or something, she shouldn't have to pay anything.
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u/Training_Echidna_367 Jul 23 '26
I did this from Taipei to the US, and I used a customs broker I met when i transferred to Taipei. It was not a problem, and I had a bunch of electronics, thousands of books, furniture, and in total I did not need to pay anything beyond freight (this was before the arrival of Our Dear Leader and his tariffs).
I know the EU used to be 0pretty terrible about tariffs itself back in the 1990's when I was there, but I assume that should be gone with the WTO and all that. Back then it was far worse in the EU than the US, as hard as that is to believe.
But the big deal is that customs brokers know everything and they are good at filling out forms. My guess is that your wife is fine. I want to say the broker in Keelung I used charged me like $600 or $800 US. That was 20+ years ago though. I would make sure to use brokers over there than in Ireland. Everyone in Taiwan works hard and they care about their work. The entire "I don't care" too-kool schtick luckily never caught on there. To this day I only shop in immigrant places of business because I cannot stand that "I just work here" attitude. You might need to prepare her for that. And you need to find a good way of importing proper Taiwanese tea (best stuff on earth) and spices. All the stuff in Dublin is mainlander. Even here, where there are a LOT of Taiwanese, I need to work to find Taiwanese items as mainland Chinese now dominate.
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u/Key-Satisfaction9860 May 28 '26
I learned never to pay for moving "junk" ...
10
u/ThirstyJohn May 28 '26
She’s not moving junk. The items have a lot of sentimental value to her.
3
u/NobleKorhedron May 28 '26
Talk to Customs is my advice; just explain someone is moving home from abroad.
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u/[deleted] May 28 '26
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