Car Tax

Green and Mean

Satirist Joseph O'Connor nicely catologued the madness of the last flush of the boom:

I used to drive a beamer, boys, upholstered plush and deep,
For to drive the kids to ballet class, the au pair had a jeep,
The Missus had an SUV, a vehicle mean for the sticks,
For to drive to the mall at Dundrum, me boys, for a latte and Harvey Nix.

Well, thankfully, the SUV is a wounded beast and those of us who don't fancy living on Venus (daily temperatures there will melt lead) can only hope that recession will kill them dead.

To increase the downside of owning a behomoth, the government instituted a new system of annual motor tax based on carbon dioxide emissions.

The more efficient the vehicle, the lower the tax. Monsters pay for their depravity.

Tax Bands Based on Fuel Efficiency - Cars Purchased After 1 Jan 2008

Generally, the bigger the car, the higher the tax. But, an older, inefficient car may cost more than a brand new gargantua with the latest emission controls.

Size Counts

Car tax used to based on the size of the engine. Used cars that were registered by their previous owner before January 1st, 2008 still use that old system.

It works this way: The larger the engine, the higher the tax. For instance, a 1.3 litre engine will pay annual taxes approaching €300 while a 1.6 litre engine pays nearly €400 and a 2 litre behemoth will set you back by over €650. This tax does not drop with age. A twenty year old car pays exactly the same as an equivalent sized new auto.

In order to tax a newly-imported car, the importer must present it at a regional licensing authority (usually the county office) with a Vehicle Registration Certificate and an IF100 Import Form, which will be obtained from Customs and Excise at the time of importation. Again, for official customs information and forms, click here.

Older private cars are taxed by a fixed annual rate which is calculated according to the cubic capacity (cc) of the vehicle. Local county councils set their own tax rate, which may vary by up to 3% from one county to the next. Here are the base rates from which the counties all started.

You won't be surprised to find out that no county has forsworn the 3% annual rise.

The Department of Environment maintains an online system which you can use to pay our road tax. The alternative is to handle it all by snail mail or to head into your nearest County or Corporation (City) Road Tax Office. The online site has an out of date road tax chart available for download. Unfortunately, the chart stops long before SUV motor sizes are reached.

Or, try using the dated tax chart below which gives you base figures which have been raised several times. But, it does give you the idea in a glance.