Your responsibilities as a yachting professional and how FLYN-YACHTING can help you

As shipowner or captain, you are, globally, responsible for the management of the yacht in port and at sea, and for the general compliance (qualification, training, documentation, and all rules of certification and international navigation). The same applies to the administrative aspects in the fiscal, customs, social, environmental, etc. fields. You can delegate certain responsibilities through a yacht management mandate, regarding the yacht herself but also the commercial operations for charter or passenger transport.

As the shipowner's agent (central agent, charter, stakeholder, tax representative...) or as captain you have permanent or temporary duties and responsibilities including :

• day-to-day implementation of multiple tax rules, opportunities for exemption, and transparency obligations
• customs monitoring of tax-exempt fuels (fuel log book) and year-end report
• filing of compliant accounting at year-end
• filing of an international commercial shipping report (70% threshold)
• presentation of a certificate of VAT exemption (ports, supplies, construction sites...)
• declarations of entry into territorial waters, of intention to anchor or stop, of pilotage; associated sanitary, port and customs rules

The FLYN-YACHTING suite of products and services can help you lighten your workload by demonstrating you have adhered to the required obligation either priori or a posteriori. All you need to do is integrate these elements into the management of commercial contracts (VAT & TICPE), into annual declarations (70%, fuel), or more simply into the on-board archives. 

How does FLYN-YACHTING work?

FLYN-YACHTING relies on the position information provided by the AIS of the yacht which is irrefutable data and accepted by the national authorities.

FLYN-YACHTING has a large database of maritime borders, ports, shipyards and anchorages in the Mediterranean, administrative and maritime areas at sub-regional level, and geomatic processing programs developed in-house.

FLYN-YACHTING can therefore analyze the dynamic situation of a yacht (en route / in port / at the yard / at anchorage), the area where it is located (territorial waters of a country, region, department) and, for some countries, the applicable environmental and nautical regulations (forbidden or regulated anchorage).

This analysis over time allows the status to be verified, for example, compliance with the length of time since temporary admission to the EU (18 months), the length of stay of a crew member with regard to their social status (6 months), the time or distance traveled in a commercial operation (calculation of VAT on charter or transport), compliance with anchorage limitations (environmental protection), etc.

For yachts not equipped with AIS, it is recommended to provide a continuous record of GPS navigation and relevant extracts from the navigation log.

The need to associate your business data with the yacht's itinerary

With regard to navigation under transport agreement, the opportunities for tax exemption are significant, and take note of the following :

• international shipping routes, if they reach a port in a different country from the country of departure (exempt)
• passenger transport between Corsica and mainland France (exempt)
• sailing quota in international waters (exempted) and modulation of the VAT rate (Corsica: 2.1% instead of 10%)
• in addition to the access, to be justified, to a fuel oil free of TICPE and VAT.

The VAT calculation report offered by FLYN-YACHTING deals with these different cases, calculates and justifies the tax status of each travel leg thus determined, up to the final invoice.

For this purpose, the captain, in exchange with FLYN's experts, must specify during the cruise the nature of each stopover, according to whether it is a simple navigation stop at anchor, a transit stopover with local commercial exchange, or a stopover with passenger embarkation or disembarkation. These elements (and their justifications) will make it possible to justify partial or total tax exemptions.

With regard to charter navigation, the situation is much simpler (departure from France or Italy) from 2021: only the time spent in non-European waters is exempt with regard to the total duration of the charter. The VAT exemption is then limited, but independent of the types of stopovers and passenger movements, which will only change the routes qualifying for the 70% threshold of international commercial navigation.

FLYN-YACHTING's reports analyze and take into account these different situations and provide you with a detailed and conclusive report.

Need for localization & cumulative treatment

The products and services of FLYN-YACHTING follow the variation of regulations with regard to the navigation and stays of the yacht in the visited territories, whose regulations are known.

In addition to the yacht's positions over time, (mainly taken from the AIS), FLYN-YACHTING will process international or non-EU (VAT exempt) sailing crossings, calculate elapsed times or distances travelled, determine the beginning and end of events such as change of territorial waters, end of a call, entry into port, anchorage, etc.

The association of these events with the knowledge of the applicable regulations will make it possible to determine situations such as:

• is the yacht anchored in an authorized area?
• has the yacht exceeded the threshold for the duration of stationing time, modifying the temporary import status or the social status of the crew? Both modify the temporary importation status.
• has the yacht reached 70% international commercial navigation?