Photos of a locally-registered Rolls-Royce Ghost bearing a shocking RM54,502 road tax disc (included below) went viral on social media platforms yesterday. A yearly road tax worth the price of a brand new Perodua Myvi? Surely not?
Well, that number is totally legit, seeing that it’s a vehicle with a 6.6 litre (6,592 cc) engine that is company-registered. Key in the same parameters into our handy road tax calculator on CarBase.my and you』ll get the exact same figure: RM54,502.
Now, how can a car’s road tax go up that high, we hear you ask? Spare a few minutes as we explain Malaysia’s unique road tax structure in detail.
For a standard vehicle (sedan, hatchback, wagon, coupe or convertible – all officially classified as a 「saloon」) with a private registration in Peninsular Malaysia, the road tax structure is as per above. Most of us fall in this category, and this applies to both petrol and diesel engines.
As you can see, a car with a 1.6 litre (1,600 cc) engine or below gets charged a fixed flat rate (from RM20 to RM90). Get a car with a larger engine and the calculation gets a bit more complicated, as it now involves the progressive rate.
Let’s use a Toyota Camry 2.5 (2,494 cc) as an example. Here, the tier’s base rate is RM380. On top of that, RM1 is added on for each cc exceeding 2,000 cc. So that’s RM380 + RM494, making up a total of RM874.
For a company-registered vehicle, a slightly different structure applies. A costlier one, as you』d expect.
Taking the same Camry 2.5 again, a higher base rate of RM760 is charged, together with a progressive rate of RM3 per additional cc over 2,000 cc. RM760 + RM1,482 (RM3 x 494) totals up to RM2,242, which is more than double of the RM874 levied on the same car that is privately registered.
The 6,592 cc Rolls-Royce Ghost that went viral yesterday falls in this category. It gets charged a base rate of RM6,010, and an additional RM13.50 for each cc in excess of 3,000 cc, amounting to exactly RM54,502.
For a 「non-saloon」 vehicle, namely an MPV, an SUV or a pick-up truck, a different set of numbers apply again. This time though, both private and company registered vehicles get charged the same road tax.
Numbers here are significantly lower than those above. The massive Infiniti QX80 SUV with its 5.6 litre (5,552 cc) V8 engine, for instance, would get a RM5,723.20 road tax, as opposed to either RM13,614 (private) or RM40,462 (company) that would be charged on a 「saloon」 vehicle bearing the same engine size.
Things are even cheaper still over in East Malaysia, for both 「saloon」 (above) and 「non-saloon」 vehicles (below). The same rates apply to both private and company registered cars too.
There are certain exceptions to these rules, of course. Register a car in Pulau Pangkor or Langkawi, and the structure is completely different. A vehicle with a 1,000 cc engine or less gets a flat RM20 annual fee, while others are charged the equivalent of 50% of the particular vehicle’s road tax price in the Peninsular.
It’s much the same in Labuan too, with the same RM20 flat rate applied to cars with 1,000 cc engines and below. Anything with a larger motor gets the equivalent of 50% of the charge given to an identical vehicle that is registered in Sabah or Sarawak.