Token Tax Deadlines and Rates by Province: What You Actually Owe
Every vehicle owner in Pakistan pays an annual token tax — but exactly how much, and how it's structured, depends on which province issued your registration, plus a separate federal charge that applies regardless of province.
Two genuinely separate line items
The bill you pay at your provincial excise office each year actually bundles two different taxes. The provincial token tax is set independently by each province's excise and taxation department — Punjab, Sindh, and Islamabad Capital Territory all set their own rates and bands, and they don't match each other. The federal withholding tax, collected under Income Tax Ordinance Section 234 at the same time, is set nationally and depends only on your engine capacity and whether you're an active filer, a late filer, or a non-filer — not on your province at all.
Why the provincial amount varies so much
Punjab and Islamabad both charge a flat fixed amount for smaller engines (up to 1000cc) but switch to a percentage of the vehicle's invoice value for larger engines — meaning the actual rupee amount for a 1600cc car depends on what that specific car is worth, not just its engine size. Sindh, by contrast, uses a fully fixed table by cc band regardless of vehicle value. This structural difference is easy to miss if you're comparing token tax figures with someone in a different province.
The filer/non-filer gap is real money
The federal Section 234 component roughly doubles (and in some bands more than doubles) for non-filers compared to active filers — a genuinely material annual cost difference that has nothing to do with the vehicle itself and everything to do with your tax filing status. See our Filer vs Non-Filer Calculator for the full picture of what non-filer status costs across every transaction type, not just vehicles.
A one-time alternative: lifetime token tax
Some provinces let you pay a single lump sum instead of the annual token tax for smaller vehicles — worthwhile if you plan to keep the car for many years, since it replaces years of recurring payments with one upfront fee.
Calculate your actual total
Our Token Tax Calculator combines both the provincial token tax and the federal withholding component into one total, for Punjab, Sindh, and Islamabad — the three provinces where we could verify current rates against a reliable source.
Also available in Urdu: اردو ورژن