UK Road Tax Calculator (car tax / VED) — 2026-27 rates
uk_car_tax_vedWhat you’ll pay to tax your car this year — the first-year bill on a new one, the £200 everyone pays after that, and the £440 surcharge on pricier cars. Car tax arrives as two very different bills. The first year is a one-off charge set by the car’s CO2, running from a few hundred pounds to over £5,000 — which is why it usually disappears into the on-the-road price and is forgotten. Every year after that is a flat £200, and electric cars have paid it since 1 April 2025, the single fact a general-purpose AI is most likely to get wrong. Then there is the surcharge: any car listed above £40,000 pays an extra £440 a year from its second year to its sixth. For EVs that threshold rose to £50,000 on 1 April 2026 and was backdated to anything registered from April 2025, so even an answer that was correct last year has gone stale. Cars from 2001 to 2017 run on an older CO2 table, which is here as well.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| co2 | No | CO2 emissions (g/km) From the V5C logbook or the manufacturer. Sets the first-year rate for cars registered from April 2025 and the band for 2001–2017 cars. Ignored for EVs, and for the standard-year tax on post-2017 cars. | |
| fuel | No | Fuel type Zero emission = pure electric (or hydrogen fuel-cell). Hybrids count as petrol/diesel — their £10 hybrid discount ended in April 2025. Non-RDE2 diesels pay one first-year band higher (see methodology; this tool assumes RDE2). | petrolDiesel |
| regDate | No | When was the car first registered? The decisive input — three different tax regimes by first-registration date (the date the car was first registered anywhere, not when you bought it). Cars first registered before 1 March 2001 are taxed by engine size instead and are out of scope here. | new |
| listPrice | No | Manufacturer list price when new (£) The published list price on the day of first registration, including factory options and VAT — not what was actually paid. This decides the expensive-car supplement, and it sticks with the car for life. | |
| yearOfOwnership | No | Which year of the car’s life? Which year’s tax to show. The CO2-based first-year rate only exists for cars registered from April 2025 — for older cohorts "first year" is shown as a normal year. Years 2–6 are when the expensive-car supplement can apply. | standard |