Readers’ forum: Exporting cars

One of my clients is a car dealer in Liverpool who has a lucrative contract with a business in Cyprus.

He buys new cars with a large discount from the UK manufacturer and then sells them to the Cyprus customer giving his customer a discount as well but obviously less than the rate he gets from the manufacturer.

However it seems that my client’s profit margin will now be eliminated post-Brexit by a tariff in Cyprus because the cars were manufactured in China – rules of origin? And there are extra charges being quoted by an external agent for dealing with export and import declarations in the UK and Cyprus.

My client has asked if it would make any difference if he formed a separate company in Northern Ireland to buy the cars and got one of these new ‘XI’ numbers that are unique...