Islamabad token tax 2026: the new ICT rates, due dates and penalty

10 min read · Facts checked 2026-09-29

From 1 July 2026, under the Finance Act 2026, Islamabad token tax on a private car depends on engine size: Rs 20,000 once, for life, up to 1000cc; 0.25% of invoice value a year from 1001cc to 2000cc; and 0.35% a year above that. Motorcycles are unchanged at Rs 1,000, Rs 2,000 or Rs 5,000 for life. Electric vehicles pay no token tax. Taxis, public service and goods vehicles stay on flat yearly amounts.

The Finance Act 2026 replaced Islamabad's token tax tables with effect from 1 July 2026. Before that, private cars paid flat rupee amounts set by engine size. Now a private car above 1000cc pays a percentage of its invoice value every year, and the lifetime amount for a car up to 1000cc has doubled, from Rs 10,000 in the superseded table to Rs 20,000.

The Islamabad rates below were checked against the enacted text of the Act and the department's fee schedule. Where a question has no published answer, this guide says so instead of guessing.

Enter the plate in the box below. The Islamabad excise record includes a tax paid upto field, which shows how far the vehicle's token tax has been paid. You do not need the registration date: Islamabad's official portal asks for it, and we work it out.

An old date is not proof the tax is unpaid. What tax paid upto means explains why, and what the department did in March 2026 to vehicles with old dates.

For a private car the rate depends on engine size.

The percentages are for private cars only. The same Act replaced the tables for taxis, public service vehicles and goods vehicles, but those stayed on flat yearly amounts. If your record shows a commercial body type, none of the percentages apply to you, and the fee schedule on the Islamabad Excise website is where to find your figure.

Token tax is also not the whole bill. Income tax and professional tax are separate items, so what you pay can be more than the token tax figure on its own.

It depends on the vehicle. A private car up to 1000cc and every motorcycle pay once, for the life of the vehicle. The department's fee schedule writes the small-car rate as "20,000 (Lifetime)", and its own calculator labels that case "Token Tax (LIFE TIME)".

A private car above 1000cc now pays every year, as a percentage of invoice value. Under the old table the amount was set by engine size alone. Now two cars with the same engine can owe different amounts.

A lifetime amount is paid once, so it does not build up arrears year by year. What is not settled is whether an owner who paid the old Rs 10,000 lifetime amount now owes more. That question is covered in the last section.

Islamabad Excise does not publish a table of vehicle values by make, model and year, so every calculation starts from the vehicle's own figures. Work through it in this order.

1. Confirm the vehicle is registered in Islamabad. Other regions set their own token tax. Punjab, for example, allows a 10% rebate if the whole year is paid on or before 31 August. See the Punjab page for what its register needs.
2. Check what kind of vehicle it is. A motorcycle pays its lifetime amount and an electric vehicle pays no token tax. Taxis, public service vehicles and goods vehicles pay flat yearly amounts. The next two steps are for private cars.
3. Find the engine size. For a private car up to 1000cc, the answer is Rs 20,000 for life.
4. Above 1000cc, take the invoice value and multiply it by 0.25% if the engine is 2000cc or less, or by 0.35% if it is larger. The result is the yearly token tax.
5. Check how far the tax is already paid. The record's tax paid upto date shows it.

Worked examples

These use invented invoice values to show the arithmetic. They are not the price of any real car.

The second example shows where the two regimes meet. At an invoice value of Rs 8,000,000, a car between 1001cc and 2000cc pays as much every year as a 1000cc car pays once for its whole life.

The department publishes online tax calculators on its website. They carry their own notice that the information may be "partially or completely incorrect or not properly up-to-date", so check any result against the fee schedule page on the same site.

Islamabad token tax is due before 31 July, 31 October, 31 January and 30 April. The licence expires on 30 June.

The law frames token tax as a quarterly levy. Only the lifetime amounts are expressly set apart from that, and they are paid once. Whether the new yearly percentages can still be paid in quarterly instalments is one of the open questions below.

The penalty for unpaid Islamabad token tax is set by statute at up to twice the tax, and unpaid amounts can be recovered as arrears of land revenue. That is a ceiling, not a fixed multiplier.

As an illustration, on Rs 10,000 of unpaid token tax the penalty cannot go above Rs 20,000. Because it is a ceiling, that maximum is not an automatic charge.

Unpaid years before July 2026

The fee schedule carries one token tax table, the current one, with no columns for earlier years. It does not tell you what a year missed before 1 July 2026 costs. Do not apply the new percentages backwards to years they never covered. Ask the department for the figure.

Because two of its pages disagree. Islamabad Excise still shows the old table on its vehicle registration page: Rs 10,000 for life up to 1000cc, and no band at all for 1301cc to 1500cc. Its fee schedule page has the current rates.

If you saw Rs 10,000 on an official page, that is why. For token tax, use the fee schedule page.

Treat the registration page with care for other figures too. Its registration fee bands use different engine-size boundaries from the fee schedule, and we have not been able to confirm which set is current.

It shows how far the vehicle's token tax has been paid. It is the date to check before buying a used car, and in March 2026 the department announced action against vehicles whose date is very old.

In March 2026 Islamabad Excise announced it would suspend the registration of any vehicle whose motor vehicle tax was last paid on or before 30 June 2015, and cancel it after 15 days. It has since published a list of more than 65,000 cancelled registrations.

Read that list's title closely. The department's own title for it is vehicles cancelled due to incomplete information and tax default. Incomplete information is a ground of its own, so an entry is not proof of unpaid tax.

If you are buying, an old date is a reason to have the record checked at the department before any money moves. It is not a verdict either way. The transfer guide covers what the transfer itself involves.

An Islamabad record can include engine size, body type, assessed value and how far the token tax is paid: the figures the steps above ask for, apart from a confirmed invoice value. The lookup does not work out what you owe.

Nobody can tell you yet. It is one of three questions about the new regime with no published answer. A wrong guess on any of them costs real money, so they are listed here rather than filled in.

Islamabad Excise is the authoritative source for all of this, and the only one that can settle a disputed figure. This guide exists to explain its rules and get you to the right counter, not to stand in for it.

VehicleCheckPK is independent and not affiliated with any government department. The excise departments and police forces named here hold the authoritative records; for any legal purpose, confirm with them directly.