VRT Calculator – CO2 Bands, NOx Levy and EV Relief

The full CO2 band table — and where your car lands

Revenue charges the CO2 element from this 20-band table, exactly as published in its VRT manual. Your band is highlighted live as you change the CO2 figure above. Note the minimums: on a cheap car the flat minimum, not the percentage, can be the bigger number.

Keep exploring

How VRT is worked out, in three steps

The maths, and every assumption in the open

Going deeper

The bill at every price, in the same band

Hold the car still — a petrol car at 120 g/km of CO2 and 40 mg/km of NOx, in the 16% band — and change only the OMSP. The CO2 element scales with the value, the NOx levy does not move at all, and the total follows the CO2 element. Every figure below was produced by the calculator itself.

Notice how the effective rate drifts down as the price rises: the fixed €200 NOx levy is a bigger share of a small bill than of a large one. That drift runs the other way on a cheap car, where the band minimum can take over entirely. At an OMSP of €1,000 in this same band, 16% would be only €160, below the band minimum of €320 — so the calculator charges the €320 minimum, and the total becomes €520 once the €200 NOx levy is added, an effective rate of 52%. Minimums exist for exactly this case: without them, a nearly worthless car would attract nearly no VRT. If your estimate looks surprisingly high as a percentage, check whether the minimum, not the percentage, is setting your CO2 element.

The same table also gives you the sensitivity rule for OMSP surprises. In this band, every €1,000 that Revenue’s valuation differs from yours moves the bill by €160 — 16% of the difference. In the bottom band it would move by €70 per €1,000, and in the top band, above 190 g/km at 41%, by €410. When you read an Irish listing for the same model, age and mileage before your appointment, you are really estimating which of those per-thousand rates will apply to the gap between your guess and Revenue’s figure.

The NOx levy, worked across fuels

The NOx tiers are the same for every fuel — €5 per milligram for the first 40 mg/km, €15 for the next 40, and €25 above 80 — but the caps are not, and the cap is what makes a diesel bill diverge from a petrol bill at the same NOx figure. The table below, all from the calculator, holds the car at an OMSP of €30,000 and 120 g/km and varies only the NOx figure and the fuel.

Up to 40 mg/km the fuels are identical, because most modern petrol cars never leave the cheapest tier. At 80 mg/km the uncapped levy is already €800, so the petrol cap bites and a petrol car pays €600 while a diesel pays the full €800. The cap starts biting for petrol just above 66 mg/km, where the uncapped figure first passes €600. Above that, every extra milligram is free for a petrol car and €25 for a diesel, until the diesel cap of €4,850 — which the uncapped levy only reaches at 242 mg/km. That asymmetry is the whole policy: the levy arrived in January 2020 aimed at diesel nitrogen oxide emissions, and the caps encode how far each fuel is allowed to be charged for them. Fully electric cars skip the levy entirely, which is a third position, not a lower tier.

For a buyer, the lesson is to read the NOx figure, not just the CO2 band, on any diesel. A diesel at 150 mg/km carries €2,550 of levy before the CO2 element is even counted — on the default car that is more than half the €4,800 CO2 element, and on a cheaper car it can exceed it. Revenue’s own diesel example uses exactly that 150 mg/km figure, and the calculator reproduces it.

Electric cars: the relief taper, in numbers

A fully electric car sits in the lowest CO2 band at 7% of the OMSP, pays no NOx levy, and qualifies for relief of up to €5,000 against the CO2 element. The relief is not all-or-nothing: it is full up to an OMSP of €40,000, then tapers by 50 cents for every euro of OMSP above €40,000, and disappears above €50,000. The table below applies that taper, exactly as the calculator does, at five OMSP values.

Two details matter. First, the relief can never exceed the CO2 element itself: at €30,000 and €40,000 the allowed relief is €5,000 on paper, but the bill is already only €2,100 and €2,800, so the relief used is the smaller figure and the total is €0. Second, the taper has two phases. Between €40,000 and about €43,860, the shrinking relief still covers the whole CO2 element, so the bill stays at €0 even as the relief allowance falls — the taper is eating headroom you were not using. Above about €43,860 the allowance drops below the CO2 element, and from there every extra €1,000 of OMSP both raises the CO2 element by €70 and cuts the relief by €500, so the bill rises by €570 per €1,000 until the relief is gone at €50,000. That is how the bill gets from €0 at €40,000 to €650 at €45,000 and €3,500 at €50,000. Above €50,000 the taper is spent and the bill rises only by the 7% rate again. The relief is currently scheduled to run to 31 December 2026, so an electric purchase planned around it should be checked against the rules in force at registration, not at the time of reading. If Revenue values the car above €40,000 when you expected €40,000 or less, the taper — not the CO2 rate — is where most of the surprise lives.

When Revenue’s OMSP differs from yours

Every figure on this page is only as good as the OMSP you type, and Revenue sets the real OMSP from its own valuation database at your appointment — starting from the declared value when new, applying depreciation for age, then adjusting for optional extras, condition and kilometres above the allowance for the car’s age. Two outwardly identical cars can therefore carry different OMSPs, and the same car presented with different mileage will be valued differently. That is why the estimate on this page is an estimate even when the arithmetic is exact: the bands, minimums, tiers, caps and relief are all fixed, but the value they multiply is Revenue’s, not yours.

What you can do is narrow the gap before you go. Irish listings for the same model, age and mileage are the best evidence available outside Revenue’s database, because they show what the car actually sells for in Ireland — which is what the OMSP is defined to be. If the assessment still surprises you, the notes on this page record that a valuation you disagree with can be reviewed, and appealed to the Tax Appeals Commission if the review does not move it. And one genuine exception is worth checking before you assume VRT is due at all: if you are moving to Ireland to live, transfer of residence relief can exempt a car you have owned and used abroad for at least six months. None of that changes the calculation on this page, which models the standard passenger-car case only — vans, heavy vehicles and motorcycles use different categories and scales and are not modelled here — but it does change how much weight to put on the estimate before the appointment, and what to bring to it.

New guide: Ireland’s VRT Explained: How Vehicle Registration Tax Is Calculated

Vehicle Registration Tax, VRT, is the tax charged when a vehicle is first registered in Ireland — on a new car bought from an Irish dealer, and on a used car imported from abroad.

VRT for a passenger car is the OMSP multiplied by the CO2 band rate, plus the NOx levy, minus any relief. The OMSP is Revenue’s assessment of the vehicle’s Irish market value, not the price paid abroad. The full guide, Ireland’s VRT Explained: How Vehicle Registration Tax Is Calculated, works through the method in detail, with worked examples and the cases that most often go wrong.

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