What happens at the ten year mark, renew, scrap or sell

A Certificate of Entitlement runs for ten years from the registration date, expiring the day before the tenth anniversary. When that date arrives you deregister the car, you renew the certificate, or you sell it and let someone else make the decision.

Most owners drift into whichever option is easiest rather than working out which is cheapest. The arithmetic is not complicated. It just depends on a figure that moves every month, so it has to be done close to the date.

What deregistering pays you

Two separate rebates, and they get confused constantly.

The PARF rebate is a percentage of the Additional Registration Fee paid when the car was new. For a car registered before February 2026 and deregistered between nine and ten years old, that is 50% of the ARF. Younger cars get a higher percentage. Past ten years it is nothing at all, permanently, and no amount of renewing brings it back.

The COE rebate is whatever is left of the certificate you already paid for, pro-rated by the months remaining. Deregister exactly at the ten year mark and this is zero, because the certificate is fully used up.

So a car reaching ten years pays out its PARF rebate and nothing else. On a car whose ARF was $20,000, that is $10,000. The ARF is printed on the vehicle log card, so you do not have to estimate it.

The rebate is the same whether the car is scrapped locally or exported. Export usually nets more in total, because a running car is worth something to a buyer overseas on top of the rebate, but the rebate portion does not change.

What renewing costs

You pay the Prevailing Quota Premium, which is the moving average of COE prices in that category over the preceding three months. LTA publishes it monthly on OneMotoring, and it is the number that decides the whole question.

Renew for ten years and you pay the full PQP. Renew for five and you pay half.

There is a second cost that appears on no invoice. The moment you renew, the PARF rebate is forfeited. You never handed over cash for it, but you gave it up, so it belongs in the total.

Here is the shape of it on a Cat A car with $20,000 ARF, assuming a PQP of $100,000.

The PQP figure above is illustrative. Check the current one for your category on OneMotoring before running your own numbers, because it moves every month and the gap between categories is wide.

The ten year renewal works out cheaper per year, and that is almost always true, because the forfeited rebate gets spread over twice as long.

So why renew for five

Two honest reasons.

Half the outlay. If the car develops something expensive in year twelve, you have less money committed to it. For an owner who is not certain the car has another decade in it, that matters more than the cost per year.

You are not tying yourself to a fifteen year old car. Ten years is a long time to commit to a vehicle that is already ten years old.

The thing to know before choosing it is that a five year renewal is final. You cannot renew again at the end of it. The car has to be deregistered at fifteen years. A ten year renewal can be renewed again.

There is one more asymmetry that catches people out. A five year renewal carries no COE rebate. Deregister in year thirteen and you get nothing back for the two years you paid for and did not use. A ten year renewal is pro-rated in the normal way, so leaving early returns something.

What gets more expensive after ten years

Road tax picks up a surcharge that climbs every year and caps at half again.

That is applied on top of the normal road tax for the engine capacity, so a car paying $1,200 a year at ten years old pays $1,800 once the surcharge reaches its cap.

Inspection moves from annual to every six months from the tenth year. It is not expensive, but it is twice as often and the car has to keep passing.

And the car is a ten year old car regardless of how well it presents. Suspension bushes, cooling system, rubber seals and electronics are all further through their lives than the paint suggests. Anyone renewing should get a proper workshop assessment first, not a walk around the car.

Selling it instead

The third option is to sell before the deadline and let the buyer decide.

Be clear about what you are selling. A dealer looking at a car with a few months of COE left is valuing it at close to the PARF rebate, because that is what they can realise if nobody buys it. The car being in good condition lifts that number, but not by as much as owners expect. You are past the point where condition drives the price.

Selling earlier, at seven or eight years, gets you a materially better number, because there is still meaningful certificate left and a higher PARF percentage. If you already suspect you will not renew, the expensive move is waiting until month 119 to act on it.

The comparison worth making

Renewing at $11,000 a year is not obviously bad or obviously good. It is a number, and it needs something to sit against.

Put it next to the annual depreciation on a car you would otherwise buy. If a five year old PARF car depreciates $11,000 a year, renewing gets you a car you already know the history of, at the same cost, with higher maintenance risk. If that car depreciates $14,000 a year, renewing wins on cost alone.

Two adjustments before you compare. Renewal costs are cash, and a renewed COE cannot be financed the way a car purchase can, so the money has to be found. And a renewed car carries no PARF entitlement at all afterward, which is the same trade covered in PARF car or COE car, which one actually suits you.

Timing and deadlines

Renewal has to be done before the COE expires, and the PQP you pay is the one in force for the month you pay it. If the figure has been climbing, that timing is worth a few thousand dollars.

If the certificate expires without renewal, there is a short window to deregister the car before penalties apply. The exact terms are set by LTA and change, so check the current position on OneMotoring rather than relying on what someone told you last year.

Before you decide

Four things, in this order.

1. The vehicle log card, for the ARF figure and the exact expiry date. Not the approximate year.
2. The current PQP for your category on OneMotoring, and what it has done over the last six months.
3. An honest workshop assessment of what the car needs in the next three years, priced.
4. What a dealer will pay for it today, so you know the value of the option you are giving up.

With those four numbers the decision usually makes itself. Without them it is a guess, and it is a guess about five figures.