Two questions, one lookup. Whether a car is currently taxed is public information you can check in seconds with just the registration number. What it will cost you to tax takes a little more reading, because Vehicle Excise Duty (VED, or simply road tax) depends on when the car was first registered, what it emits, and what it cost new.

Checking if a car is taxed

Enter the registration at AboutThisCar or the DVLA's own enquiry service and you'll see the tax status immediately: taxed (with expiry date), untaxed, or SORN (declared off the road).

Three things buyers regularly get wrong:

1. Tax does not come with the car. Since 2014, road tax dies with the sale. The seller gets a refund for full remaining months; you must tax the car before you drive it away, which you can do online in minutes with the V5C reference.
2. "It's taxed until March" is meaningless in an advert. See point 1. It will be untaxed the moment the keeper changes.
3. An untaxed car on a driveway is fine only if it's on SORN. Untaxed and not SORN means the keeper is already collecting penalties, which tells you something about how the car has been looked after.

What VED costs in 2026/27

For cars first registered on or after 1 April 2017, the system is simple after year one:

• Standard rate: £200 a year.Petrol, diesel, hybrid or electric, the flat rate is the same from the car's second year onwards.
• First-year rate: set by CO₂.New cars pay an emissions-based rate in year one, from £10 for zero-emission cars up to £5,690 for anything over 255g/km. If you're buying used, this was the first owner's problem, not yours.
• The expensive car supplement: £440 a year extra. Cars with an original list price over £40,000 pay this on top of the standard rate in years two to six (£640 total per year). The threshold rises to £50,000 for zero-emission cars registered from April 2026. This catches a lot of used buyers out: the original list price is what counts, not what you paid. A three-year-old premium SUV bought for £30,000 can still owe £640 a year.
• Electric cars pay VED now. The exemption ended in April 2025. EVs pay the standard rate like everything else, and (subject to the higher threshold above) the supplement too.

Older cars use different tables: 2001 to 2017 registrations are banded by CO₂ (band A cars that were free to tax now pay a small annual rate), and pre-2001 cars go by engine size. Rates change most Aprils, so check GOV.UK for the current table before budgeting.

Why this matters when buying used

VED is a running cost that varies from trivial to over £600 a year between two cars that look similar in an advert. Before you commit:

• Check the car's CO₂ figure(it's in the DVLA record) and match it to the current rate table.
• If the car is under six years old and was anywhere near £40,000 new, check whether the supplement applies. Ask the seller what they actually pay.
• Confirm the tax statusso you're not inheriting a SORN'd car with an expired MOT and a hidden reason for both.

One search before you buy