Q: I am planning to make aliya in about a year. I have a lot of stuff here and I'm trying to decide how much to bring with me. I own a large box truck, and I've been thinking of filling it and shipping the whole truck filled. Is this a viable option? The truck is an '89 model a little over 8 feet wide, 12.5 feet tall and 33 feet long. I also have a car and two '70's era motorcycles. I know such things are hard to replace in Israel so I want to bring them, but I've also heard that registration and insurance of old vehicles can be a challenge too. Do you have any advice for me? Thanks, Arie

Dear Arie, When I first read your question, I was a little overwhelmed, but the answer is simpler than I originally thought.
First of all, lets look at a new immigrant's (oleh hadash) rights for a vehicle. An oleh is allowed to bring in (or purchase here) one vehicle for personal use and enjoy a significant discount on the purchase tax. You will note, I did not say the purchase or import is tax-free. Even though the discount is significant, the taxes you will pay remain very significant.
So, let's drop the truck as an option for importing on your rights since the oleh reduction in taxes, only applies to a vehicle for personal use and includes motorcycles. So you can import your car or one of your motorcycles with your rights. Your other vehicles, after the first one, are restricted to the standard restrictions every Israeli faces when she or he wants to personally import a car. An Israeli can import a car no more than two years old. A returning citizen (toshav hozer) can import a car up to four years old.
Now, if you thought about importing the truck and paying full taxes - well that is not an option either. Israel does not allow the import of used trucks - certainly not one from 1989.
If you ask whether it is worth it to import a car, in almost every case, I would answer - no. I give this advice knowing that it will hurt my parnasa (income). I recently worked with Customs to determine the expected taxes on a 2000 Toyota Camry to be imported by an oleh hadash. Taxes alone came to around $8,800 and this does not include the cost of shipping. The client took my advice and sold the Camry in California and is buying a used car here.
For your information, as an oleh you will pay purchase tax at the rate of 50% of the value of the vehicle plus VAT (16.5%). VAT is calculated on the value of the vehicle, the purchase tax and the value of the ocean freight! In short, this comes to a small fortune. If you import a vehicle, customs will determine the value of the car and the ocean freight in order to calculate taxes due.
One last option is importing antique vehicles. An antique vehicle is any vehicle over 30 years old and may be imported without the two year or four year age restriction mentioned above. Your motorcycles may fall in this range. If not, you will not be allowed to import them.
A little beauracratic humor to end on...An oleh wanted to import a motorcycle with a 1200 cc engine. In order to import any vehicle the oleh must have both an Israeli license and a license from the country of origin. A new driver in Israel can initially get a motorcycle license only up to 800 cc. After a year, he can take another test to get a license for a larger engine. In this case, the oleh could not take possession of the imported motorcycle until he got the second license over a year later. His motorcycle sat in storage for over a year. He could have bought another bike with what he paid for storage!