Bringing Your Household Goods to Germany Duty-Free: Übersiedlungsgut and Formular 0350
If your family is moving to Munich from outside the EU, your furniture, appliances, and other personal belongings can enter Germany completely free of import VAT as genuine Übersiedlungsgut (relocation goods), but only if you meet three conditions at once: 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 customs declaration, using the standardized Formular 0350, within 12 months of establishing your new German residence. Once customs clears the shipment duty-free, the goods stay under a 12-month restriction, you cannot sell, rent, lend, or give them away during that window without losing the exemption and owing back duty. For families in Munich, that declaration is filed with the Hauptzollamt München. None of this covers alcohol, tobacco, or vehicle tax, those still apply on their own terms even within an otherwise duty-free household shipment.
The Official Rule
Moving your whole household from outside the EU, everything from your dining table to your children’s bicycles, sounds like it should automatically qualify as duty-free relocation goods. It doesn’t, not without meeting a specific set of conditions the German customs authority (Zoll) lays out under EU Regulation (EC) No. 1186/2009 (the Zollbefreiungsverordnung), Articles 3 and following.
Three conditions have to be true at the same time for your shipment to qualify as genuine Übersiedlungsgut. First, your ordinary residence before the move has to have been outside the EU customs territory for at least 12 months, an exception exists if you can show, for example through an employment contract, that you genuinely intended to stay abroad for 12 months or more even if the actual stay ended up shorter. Second, the goods have to actually belong to you, and for non-consumable items specifically, furniture, electronics, anything that isn’t used up, you need to have owned and used each item for at least 6 months in your country of origin before relocating to the EU. Third, the customs declaration itself, using the standardized Formular 0350, has to be filed within 12 months of establishing your new residence in Germany. An early import is also possible if you commit to establishing that EU residence within 6 months and post the required security.
| 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 |
Clearing customs as duty-free relocation goods doesn’t end your obligations, it starts a new 12-month restriction. From the date your application is accepted, you can’t sell, rent, pawn, lend, or give away any item in that shipment for 12 months. Doing so anyway means losing the exemption entirely and having import duty assessed retroactively on whatever you disposed of. If you move again to a different address within that 12-month window, you’re required to notify the customs office that’s supervising your case of the new address.
What the exemption actually waives is import VAT, not everything. Excise duties on items like alcohol and tobacco still apply on their own terms even inside an otherwise qualifying shipment, and a personal vehicle brought in as part of the move still owes German vehicle tax (Kraftfahrzeugsteuer) once it’s registered here, with no special exemption on that specific tax just because the vehicle cleared duty-free for import purposes. A vehicle also needs its own proof: documentation from the relevant foreign authority confirming it was registered in the country of origin under your own name.
Hauptzollamt München, Sophienstraße 6, 80333 München. This is the customs office that processes Formular 0350 declarations for families relocating their household to Munich.
What Real People Say
Families who’ve actually gone through this process, discussed on threads like forum.chinaseite.de’s Zollanmeldung 0350 Übersiedlungsgut thread and on international relocation forums like Expat Forum, describe the same recurring friction point: putting together a genuinely usable inventory list. Customs doesn’t just want a box count, it wants enough detail on the higher-value items (what they are, roughly when and where they were bought, approximate value) that an officer can sanity-check the 6-month prior use condition without you needing a receipt for literally every object in the house.
The practical habit that comes up repeatedly is starting that inventory list well before the move itself, not the week boxes get packed. Families who’d already sold or replaced big furniture items close to the move date describe running into exactly the situation the rules are built around, a nearly-new item that technically doesn’t meet the 6-month ownership bar, and having to either leave it out of the duty-free declaration or accept it might get separately assessed.
Step by Step
- Confirm you genuinely meet the 12-month prior residence requirement before you start planning around a duty-free shipment, this is the condition with the least flexibility.
- Start your household inventory early, noting what you’ve owned for at least 6 months versus anything bought more recently, since recent purchases may need to be handled separately.
- Hold off on last-minute furniture or appliance replacements if you want the new items included in the duty-free shipment, or accept upfront that anything bought too close to the move likely won’t qualify.
- File Formular 0350 well within the 12-month window after your German residence begins, don’t wait until the deadline is close.
- If a vehicle is part of the move, gather its foreign registration documentation separately, and budget for German vehicle tax 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 the Hauptzollamt 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, but exact documentation requirements, valuations, and case-by-case exceptions are decided by the individual Hauptzollamt handling your declaration and can vary. For your specific move, confirm current requirements directly with German customs (Zoll) or the Hauptzollamt München before shipping.
FAQ & Common Pitfalls
We sold our old sofa and bought a new one three months before the move, since we knew the old one wouldn't survive shipping. Does that new sofa still qualify?
This is exactly where the 6-month prior use rule catches people off guard. Non-consumable household items, furniture very much included, have to have been owned and actually used by you for at least 6 months before you relocate your residence to the EU. A sofa bought 3 months before the move doesn't meet that bar, so it wouldn't qualify as duty-free relocation goods on its own, even though the rest of your shipment might. In practice this means the timing of big furniture purchases matters if you're trying to keep an entire shipment inside the exemption, buying replacements only once you're confident they'll be part of your household for the following 6 months, ideally before you even start planning the move, keeps things cleaner.
Can we bring our car as part of the same Übersiedlungsgut shipment?
Vehicles and even sport aircraft can be included, but they carry their own extra condition on top of everything else: you need to show the vehicle was registered in the country of origin under your own name, verified through documentation from the relevant foreign authority. And a genuinely separate point that catches people out: even once a vehicle clears as duty-free relocation goods for import VAT purposes, it's still fully subject to German motor vehicle tax (Kraftfahrzeugsteuer) once registered here, there's no exemption from that specific tax just because the vehicle itself entered duty-free.
What actually happens if we need to sell or give away something from the shipment before the 12 months are up, say because our apartment here turned out to be smaller than expected?
Doing this deliberately within the 12-month window after your declaration was accepted breaks the condition the whole exemption was granted under, transferring goods to someone else during that period, whether by sale, gift, rental, pledge, or loan, means losing the exemption and having duty assessed retroactively on whatever you disposed of. If a genuine downsizing situation like a smaller-than-expected apartment comes up, it's worth checking directly with the Hauptzollamt handling your case before making any decision, rather than assuming a small, practical exception applies automatically.