Vehicle Registration

If you are in this section of registration of the vehicle, it can be for two reasons: either you have bought a new car in Poland and you want to register it so I recommend you to ask in the concessionaire how to proceed or you are a crazy person like me and you have crossed all Europe with your car and obviously you want to legalize it to avoid problems with the police. Well, so this section is for the second option, for which we have brought the car from our country of origin (in my case from Spain) with a non-Polish registration and we want to have all the papers in order.

The first thing to know is that you can stay 6 months without Polish registration and you are not required to pay any tax for your vehicle, but you always must go inside when the car is moving and you cannot rent it or lend it to anyone (in theory). After those 6 months, you have to register it to avoid problems and strong penalties. Here I show you steps that you should follow and I recommend that if you can, you do with a person who speaks Polish, in some places they do not even speak English:

  1. Obtain the Certificate of registration of residence in Poland. More information HERE.
  2. Register at your current place of residence. More information HERE.
  3. Carry out the Technical Inspection of the Vehicle (TIV). In this section you have to look carefully at a site / workshop where are willing to do it because in some cases if you do not have Polish registration plate they do not want to do it.
  4. Go to the Customs Register of your place of residence (“Urząd Celny” in Polish) to pay the import taxes of the vehicle. It depends on which year is your vehicle for pay more or less.
  5. Translate the license of your vehicle from your language to Polish by sworn translator. If for example, as in my case, the car is in the name of another person, you need a written and signed authorization include VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) from that person, the year of registration, the current registration of the car and the transfer of the vehicle if it was by purchase or by gift. Logically this authorization also must be translated by sworn translator.
  6. Go to the Official Register of Vehicles of the city where you are going to register with all the information previously mentioned. After you must pay again the corresponding rates ( in my case around 60 €) and you will have, at the moment, a new registration and all the papers of the car.

In case you have any doubts, do not hesitate to contact me.