Bringing Your Household Goods to Berlin Duty-Free: Übersiedlungsgut and Which Zollamt Actually Handles It
If you're moving your household to Berlin from outside the EU, your furniture, appliances, and other belongings can enter Germany completely free of import VAT as genuine Übersiedlungsgut (relocation goods), the same federal rule that applies everywhere in the country: you lived outside the EU for at least 12 months before the move, you personally owned and used the non-consumable items for at least 6 months before shipping them, and you file the standardized Formular 0350 within 12 months of registering your new German residence. What's genuinely Berlin-specific is where that paperwork actually gets processed. Hauptzollamt Berlin's own headquarters on Mehringdamm doesn't clear goods itself, that job falls to two subordinate offices, Zollamt Marzahn in the east and Zollamt Dreilinden in the southwest, built on the site of the old Checkpoint Bravo, the Cold War Allied crossing point into West Berlin. And if your shipment arrives by air through BER, know that the airport's own Zollamt belongs to a different authority entirely, Hauptzollamt Potsdam, and its listed duties cover commercial air freight, not passenger relocation goods. Once your goods clear, they sit under a 12-month restriction against selling, renting, or giving them away, and the exemption only waives import VAT, not excise duties on alcohol and tobacco or vehicle tax on a car you bring along.
The Official Rule
Moving your entire household to Berlin from outside the EU, dining table, sofa, children’s bicycles, all of it, doesn’t automatically qualify as duty-free relocation goods just because you’re relocating. Zoll, the German customs authority, lays out a specific set of conditions under EU Regulation (EC) No. 1186/2009 (the Zollbefreiungsverordnung), and this part of the rule is identical no matter which German city you’re moving to.
Three conditions have to be true at once for a shipment to qualify as genuine Übersiedlungsgut. Your ordinary residence before the move has to have been outside the EU customs territory for at least 12 months, with an exception if you can document, through an employment contract for example, a genuine intention to stay abroad 12 months or longer even if the actual stay ended up shorter. The goods have to belong to you, and for non-consumable items specifically, furniture, electronics, anything not used up, you need at least 6 months of personal ownership and use in your country of origin before the move. And the declaration itself, filed on the standardized Formular 0350, has to reach the responsible customs office within 12 months of establishing your new residence in Germany.
| Condition | What it actually requires |
|---|---|
| Prior residence abroad | At least 12 months outside the EU customs territory before the move |
| Prior ownership and use | At least 6 months of personal ownership and use for non-consumable goods |
| Declaration deadline | Formular 0350 filed within 12 months of your new German residence starting |
What’s specific to Berlin is not the rule itself, it’s who actually processes your paperwork. Newcomers often assume the big customs building they find first on a search, Hauptzollamt Berlin at Mehringdamm 129c, is where this gets handled. According to Hauptzollamt Berlin’s own service listing, that address is the administrative headquarters for the district, and it explicitly does not clear goods itself (“keine Abfertigungen im Zollverkehr”). The actual work of clearing Übersiedlungsgut shipments falls to two subordinate offices instead.
| Office | Address | Belongs to | Handles Übersiedlungsgut? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hauptzollamt Berlin (headquarters) | Mehringdamm 129c, 10965 Berlin | Hauptzollamt Berlin | No, administration only |
| Zollamt Marzahn | Hellersdorfer Weg 35, 12689 Berlin | Hauptzollamt Berlin | Yes, goods clearance |
| Zollamt Dreilinden | Potsdamer Chaussee 62, 14109 Berlin | Hauptzollamt Berlin | Yes, goods clearance |
| Zollamt Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg (BER) | Georg-Wulf-Straße 1, 12529 Schönefeld | Hauptzollamt Potsdam (a different authority) | No, commercial air freight only |
Which of the two applies to you generally comes down to your postal code, and the split has a genuinely Berlin story behind it. Zollamt Marzahn, out in the city’s far east, took over responsibility for the former East Berlin administrative districts after 1990. Zollamt Dreilinden, in the southwest near Wannsee, sits on the site of the old Kontrollpunkt Dreilinden, known to the Western Allies as Checkpoint Bravo, the checkpoint that funneled West Berlin’s transit traffic toward West Germany along the Autobahn until it was decommissioned in July 1990. As a rough pattern, moving into a former East Berlin neighborhood (Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, Lichtenberg, Marzahn-Hellersdorf) tends to point toward Marzahn, and a former West Berlin address (Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Charlottenburg, Steglitz-Zehlendorf) tends to point toward Dreilinden. Treat that as a starting guess only, and confirm the exact assignment through Zoll’s own Dienststellensuche (searchable by postal code) or by calling Hauptzollamt Berlin’s main line at 030 69009-0.
Arriving by air through BER doesn’t shortcut any of this. Zollamt Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg, the customs post physically at the airport in Schönefeld, belongs to Hauptzollamt Potsdam, a completely separate authority from Hauptzollamt Berlin. Its own listed competencies cover narcotics and cannabis clearance, film duty, plant health and CITES inspections, veterinary checks, and wine imports, categories built around commercial air freight, with nothing about passenger relocation goods or Übersiedlungsgut. If your shipment comes in as air cargo, the freight side of that release is handled separately from your personal duty exemption, which still needs to be filed with whichever Berlin office, Marzahn or Dreilinden, covers your actual new address.
Zollamt Dreilinden, Potsdamer Chaussee 62, 14109 Berlin. Built on the site of the former Checkpoint Bravo, this is one of the two subordinate offices under Hauptzollamt Berlin that actually clears Übersiedlungsgut shipments for the city's southwest.
Once your shipment clears, the same federal 12-month restriction applies as anywhere else in Germany. From the date your declaration is accepted, you can’t sell, rent, pawn, lend, or give away anything in that shipment for 12 months, doing so means losing the exemption and having import duty assessed retroactively on whatever you disposed of. If you move to a different address within Berlin during that window, notify whichever office is supervising your case.
The exemption itself only waives import VAT, nothing else. Excise duties on alcohol and tobacco apply on their own terms regardless, and a vehicle brought along as part of the move still owes German Kraftfahrzeugsteuer (vehicle tax) once registered here, that specific tax has no exemption tied to the goods clearing duty-free. A vehicle also needs separate proof, documentation from the relevant foreign authority confirming it was registered in the country of origin under your own name.
What Real People Say
International moving companies that regularly handle Berlin-bound shipments describe the same recurring friction point families run into: putting together an inventory list detailed enough that a customs officer can actually verify the 6-month prior use condition without a receipt for every single object in the house. Roughly the same advice comes up across moving-company guidance for Berlin specifically: start that list months before the move, not the week boxes get packed, and book container or freight space well ahead of time, since waiting until a few weeks before the move risks express surcharges on top of everything else.
A detail that surprises quite a few newcomers once they actually start calling around: Berlin’s own courtyards and street layout add a genuinely local wrinkle to the loading side of things, older Altbau buildings often have narrow entrances and limited curbside space for a container truck, which is part of why moving companies with actual Berlin experience get recommended over ones that only know the paperwork. None of that changes the customs side of the process, but it does mean the practical planning window in Berlin tends to run a bit longer than people expect if they’re used to a more straightforward single-family-home pickup elsewhere.
Step by Step
- Confirm you genuinely meet the 12-month prior residence requirement before planning around a duty-free shipment, it’s the condition with the least flexibility.
- Start your household inventory early, distinguishing items you’ve owned and used for at least 6 months from anything bought more recently.
- Check your postal code against Zoll’s Dienststellensuche, or call Hauptzollamt Berlin at 030 69009-0, to confirm whether Zollamt Marzahn or Zollamt Dreilinden is actually responsible for your case, don’t assume based on neighborhood alone.
- Email a scanned Formular 0350 and your supporting documents to the correct office first, rather than showing up in person with paperwork, this is explicitly allowed and tends to be faster.
- If your shipment is arriving through BER, don’t expect the airport’s Zollamt to handle your relocation declaration, it belongs to Hauptzollamt Potsdam and only processes commercial freight categories.
- If a vehicle is part of the move, gather its foreign registration documentation separately, and budget for German Kraftfahrzeugsteuer regardless of the shipment’s duty-free status.
- Treat the 12 months after clearance as a genuine no-resale period for everything in the shipment, and check with your responsible Zollamt directly before selling, renting, or giving away anything from it early.
Compliance Note
This page explains the general German customs framework for household relocation goods and how it’s organized specifically in Berlin, current as of mid-2026. Exact documentation requirements, valuations, appointment procedures, and postal-code assignments are decided by the individual Zollamt handling your declaration and can change. For your specific move, confirm current requirements directly with Hauptzollamt Berlin, Zollamt Marzahn, or Zollamt Dreilinden before shipping, this is not legal or financial advice.
FAQ & Common Pitfalls
Our shipment is arriving as air freight through BER. Does that mean we handle the Übersiedlungsgut paperwork at the airport?
No, and this is the single most common assumption that trips people up. The Zollamt at BER (Georg-Wulf-Straße 1, in Schönefeld) doesn't belong to Hauptzollamt Berlin at all, it's part of a completely separate authority, Hauptzollamt Potsdam. Its own published list of competencies covers commercial air freight categories, narcotics and cannabis clearance, film duty, plant health and CITES inspections, veterinary checks, wine imports, nothing about passenger relocation goods or Übersiedlungsgut. In practice, an international moving or freight company usually handles the airport-side release of your container or crate as ordinary freight, while your personal Formular 0350 declaration and duty exemption still gets filed with the Berlin office responsible for your actual place of residence, not wherever the plane landed.
How do we know whether our case belongs to Zollamt Marzahn or Zollamt Dreilinden?
It comes down to your postal code, and there's a genuinely interesting reason for the split: Zollamt Marzahn, in the far east of the city, took over responsibility for the former East Berlin districts after 1990, while Zollamt Dreilinden, out in the southwest near Wannsee, sits on the site of the old Checkpoint Bravo, the Allied checkpoint that funneled West Berlin transit traffic toward West Germany until it was decommissioned in July 1990. So as a rough pattern, addresses in former East Berlin (Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg, Lichtenberg, Marzahn-Hellersdorf) tend to fall under Marzahn, and former West Berlin addresses (Kreuzberg, Neukölln, Charlottenburg, Steglitz-Zehlendorf) tend to fall under Dreilinden. Treat that as a starting guess, not a guarantee, and confirm your actual assignment either through Zoll's own Dienststellensuche (office locator, searchable by postal code) or by calling Hauptzollamt Berlin's main line directly.
Can we just go to Hauptzollamt Berlin's main office on Mehringdamm and hand in Formular 0350 there?
That address, Mehringdamm 129c, is the administrative headquarters for the whole Berlin customs district, and its own service listing is explicit that it does not process goods clearance itself. Turning up there with your inventory list and Formular 0350 will most likely just get you redirected to Zollamt Marzahn or Zollamt Dreilinden, whichever one covers your address. The more efficient route, confirmed by the Zoll administration's own guidance on submitting documents, is to email a scanned copy of your completed Formular 0350 and supporting paperwork to the correct office first, then go in person only for whatever inspection appointment they set up.
We're also bringing a car with us. Does that change which office we deal with, or add anything on the Berlin side?
The office you deal with stays the same, whichever of Marzahn or Dreilinden covers your address handles the vehicle alongside the rest of your household goods. What doesn't change regardless of city is the underlying federal rule: the car needs its own proof of foreign registration in your name, and even once it clears as duty-free Übersiedlungsgut for import VAT purposes, it's still fully subject to German Kraftfahrzeugsteuer (vehicle tax) once you register it here. Neither Marzahn nor Dreilinden can waive that separate tax, it's collected through the normal vehicle registration process regardless of how the car entered the country.