Buyer's guide/Road tax
What you pay, when it is due, and the one line in the law that decides whether an imported car costs you nothing extra or €600 a year. Every figure here is taken from the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law, not from another guide.
Road tax in Cyprus is worked out from your car's CO2, and it is tiered. You do not pay one rate on the whole figure. You pay each rate only on the slice of CO2 that falls inside its band.
For a car first registered from 2019, which is every car we import:
| CO2, combined cycle | You pay per gram |
|---|---|
| Up to 120 g/km | €0.50 |
| Over 120, up to 150 g/km | €3.00 |
| Over 150, up to 180 g/km | €5.00 |
| Over 180 g/km | €10.00 |
Source: Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law 86/1972, Annex I, Part I, as amended by Ν.47(Ι)/2019. Full consolidated text.
The annual fee cannot exceed €1,500, and it will never be less than €10. The final figure is rounded down to a whole euro.
Take a petrol car emitting 170 g/km. You do not pay 170 × €5. You pay:
€250 a year. A 100 g/km hybrid pays 100 × €0.50 = €50. Same road, same island, five times the difference. That gap is why it is worth asking whether the model you want comes as a hybrid.
The same law carries a second, older schedule for cars first registered before the 2019 amendment: €0.50 up to 120 and €3 up to 150, then €3 up to 180 and €8 above it. Most guides online print one table and never say which. What matters is when the car was first registered, not when you bought it.
The rule in the law is within 70 days of your road tax licence expiring. Your first licence is issued the day the car is registered and runs to either June or December.
For 2026, the deadline is 31 March. That is not a news item. It is written into the law as its own provision, exactly as it was for 2014 and 2016.
Miss it and the fee increases by €10 plus 10% of what you owed.
If you do not renew for one year and 70 days, the Road Transport Department cancels the vehicle's registration. The road tax you skipped does not vanish with it. It converts into a civil debt that you still owe. Putting the car back on the road then means re-registering it, not just paying what you missed.
You can split the bill: two half-yearly payments, or four quarterly ones. What almost nobody mentions is the price of doing it.
Each half-yearly instalment is 55% of the annual fee. Two of those is 110%. Each quarterly instalment is 27.5%. Four of those is also 110%.
Either way you pay 10% more than the person who paid once in March. On a €250 bill that is €25. On a car sitting at the €1,500 cap it is €150 a year, for the convenience of not paying at once.
One way. Online, at rtd.mcw.gov.cy, in English or Greek.
That is worth saying plainly, because most guides still list a bank counter or a district office as alternatives. The Road Transport Department's own page now gives exactly one method under "ways to renew", and it is the website. If you are reading advice that sends you to a co-operative with a folder of documents, it is describing how this used to work.
Before you can renew at all, you need a valid MOT. The Road Transport Department only allows renewal for a car that has a valid one, whatever you are willing to pay. If your MOT has lapsed, that is the queue you are joining first, and only then this one.
Source: Road Transport Department, official guidance. RTD, 27 Vasileos Pavlou, 2412 Nicosia · +357 22807000 · 07:30 to 15:00.
When a car is registered in Cyprus for the first time, the law adds an amount on top of the CO2 figure, based on the emissions standard the car was built to. This is not a one-off at the port. It is annual, and it does not stop after the first year.
| Emissions standard | Petrol | Diesel |
|---|---|---|
| Euro 6d, and any other Euro 6 | €0 | €0 |
| Euro 5b | €0 | €50 |
| Euro 5a | €100 | €250 |
| Euro 4 or older, or no Euro standard at all | €300 | €600 |
Source: Law 86/1972, Annex I, Part I, para 1(β), subparagraph (γ). Full text.
A Euro 4 diesel costs you €600 every year, for as long as you own it, on top of the CO2 charge. That is the figure that quietly turns a cheap import into an expensive car, and it is why the age of what you buy matters more than the number on the windscreen.
The law carries a correspondence table for cars that were never built to a European standard. It states that the Japanese "2009 Post New Long Term Standard", measured on the JC08 cycle and applied from 2010, counts as Euro 6. American TIER 2 and TIER 3, and California's LEV II and LEV III, map across the same way.
In plain terms: a Japanese car from 2010 onwards built to that standard pays no surcharge at all. Not a reduced one. None. It sits in subparagraph (δ) of the same schedule, and if you are importing from Japan it is the most useful line in the entire law.
| Case | Annual road tax |
|---|---|
| Fully electric car | €0.00 |
| Historic vehicle, category M1 | minus 65%, max €300 |
| Private saloon first registered before 24 Nov 2003 | capped at €300 |
| Licence valid only at weekends and public holidays | €25 |
| Anything not zero-rated | at least €10 |
There is also a special levy folded into the road tax, which the law treats as an inseparable part of it: €12 if the engine is under 2050cc and emits 100 g/km or less, €22 if it is under 2050cc and emits more than that, and €32 above 2050cc. Electric and historic vehicles are excluded.
You do not have to guess, and you should not trust the brochure. The Road Transport Department runs a public lookup: pick the make, year, model, fuel, engine size and gearbox, and it returns the figure the government will actually tax you on. That is the number to put into the sum above. Not the one in the advert.
It depends on your car's CO2, and it is tiered. For a car registered from 2019 you pay €0.50 for every gram up to 120 g/km, €3 for every gram between 120 and 150, €5 between 150 and 180, and €10 for every gram above 180. A 170 g/km petrol car works out at €250 a year. The annual fee is capped at €1,500 and electric cars pay nothing.
31 March 2026. That date is written into the law itself, not an announcement. The normal rule is within 70 days of your licence expiring, but 2026 has its own provision, as 2014 and 2016 did.
You pay €10 plus 10% of the fee on top. If you leave it for one year and 70 days the Road Transport Department cancels your vehicle's registration, and what you owe turns into a civil debt you still have to pay.
Yes, two half-yearly payments or four quarterly ones. But each half-yearly instalment is 55% of the annual fee and each quarterly one is 27.5%, so either way you pay 110%. Spreading it costs you 10% more.
No. The law lists an electric motor vehicle at €0.00. The €12 to €32 special levy does not apply to them either.
On first registration, yes, and it depends on the emissions standard the car was built to. Euro 6 pays nothing extra. A Euro 5a diesel adds €250 a year, and a Euro 4 or older diesel adds €600 a year, every year. A Japanese car built to the 2009 Post New Long Term standard counts as Euro 6, so it adds nothing.
Online at rtd.mcw.gov.cy. That is the only method the Road Transport Department now lists, whatever older guides say about banks and district offices. You need a valid MOT first. The Road Transport Department only permits renewal for a car with a valid roadworthiness certificate.
We import cars from Japan and the UK, up to 5 years old, and we can tell you what any of them costs to tax before you put money down. Tell us what you are looking at.
Contact usWe reply within one working day.
