A person or a company will be able to import up to six vehicles by paying higher taxes
14ymedio, Madrid, 4 September 2024 — The activity on the networks of Eduardo Rodríguez Dávila, Minister of Transport, is frantic. He posts on Facebook several times a day, either about new train journeys, the fortunes and misadventures of Regla’s boat or the repair of potholes in the roads, in a communicative style that contrasts with the usual opacity of the Cuban Government. He has spoken at length in the last month about the new rules for vehicles, but this Tuesday he returned to conventional television, in case there remained something more to say.
There was nothing new except some colorful note in his speech highlighting the savings that the new regulations will allow individuals who want to buy a vehicle abroad. According to the minister, Cubans will pay up to $30,000 less thanks to the reform. “If one vehicle has a dealer value of $10,000, the sales price to the buyer will be about $15,900. However, that same vehicle under the current price formulation rules would cost more than $50,000,” he explained.
Rodríguez Dávila said that individuals can now import vehicles at the same price as companies, in exchange for taxes paid in dollars.
“That same vehicle under the current pricing rules would cost more than 50,000 dollars”
The minister reviewed the current “pricing rules” mechanism, with a margin that “is around 350%-500%, of which 30% is the commercial margin of the marketer and the rest forms a special tax.” For companies, however, the price is the cost of acquisition or import, plus a commercial margin of up to 30%.
With the new rules, the price will be the import cost, the tariffs, the commercial margin (which drops to 20%) and a special tax that varies depending