Malaysia Road Tax (LKM) Calculator
Malaysia road tax calculator — get the annual LKM for any engine capacity from JPJ’s published scale, for individual or company-owned private cars in Peninsular Malaysia, with the full table shown and the 1,600cc step made plain. Runs in your browser.
Malaysia Road Tax (LKM) Calculator
Peninsular Malaysia, private saloon, hatchback, wagon or coupé. Sabah and Sarawak run their own lower scales and are not covered here.
How to Use the Malaysia Road Tax Calculator
Enter the engine capacity
In cubic centimetres, exactly as printed on your vehicle registration document — 1,496 for a 1.5-litre, not 1,500.
Choose the ownership type
Individual or company. Company-owned cars sit on a separate, substantially higher JPJ scale.
Read the annual figure
The result is the yearly LKM, with the band base and the per-cc portion shown separately so you can see how it was built.
Check your band in the table
The full published scale is shown below the result with your band highlighted, so nothing is taken on trust.
How Malaysia Taxes an Engine
Malaysian road tax — LKM, or Lesen Kenderaan Motor — is one of the more legible vehicle taxes in the region, because it depends on exactly two things: how big the engine is, and whether the car belongs to a person or to a company. There is no valuation, no age adjustment and no emissions component. JPJ publishes the whole scale, and the arithmetic is simple enough to check by hand. What makes it interesting is not its complexity but its shape.
A flat floor and a sudden cliff
Up to 1,600cc the tax is flat within each of four bands, and the amounts are genuinely small: an individually owned car up to 1,000cc pays RM 20 a year, and even at 1,600cc the bill is only RM 90. Above 1,600cc the structure changes entirely. The car moves onto a base figure for its band plus a per-cubic-centimetre charge on everything above the band floor, starting at 40 sen per cc and rising to RM 4.50 per cc beyond three litres. The transition is not smooth. A 1,600cc car pays RM 90; a 1,601cc car pays RM 200 and change. One cubic centimetre more than doubles the annual cost, and that step is the single most consequential number in the table.
At 1,600cc the annual tax is RM 90. At 1,601cc it is over RM 200 — one cubic centimetre more than doubles the bill.
Why the cliff shapes what gets sold
Tax structures that contain a cliff tend to bunch the market against it, and Malaysia is a clear example. A very large share of cars sold there displace exactly 1.5 or 1.6 litres, sitting just under the step where the scale turns punitive. Manufacturers building for the market design to that line, and buyers comparing two otherwise similar cars across it face a permanent annual difference that compounds over the life of the vehicle. Company registration doubles the effect again, since the corporate scale is steeper at every point.
The regional comparison, which runs the wrong way
Set the Malaysian scale beside Singapore’s and the result is not the flat multiple most people assume. Singapore taxes a one-litre engine roughly twenty times harder than Peninsular Malaysia does — a genuinely enormous gap at the small end of the market where most cars actually sit. But the Malaysian scale climbs so much more steeply above 1,600cc that the ratio erodes fast, and by three litres it has fallen below two. The two countries are not simply expensive and cheap; they tax the two ends of the market in almost opposite proportions. It is also worth remembering that in Singapore road tax is a rounding error next to the COE and ARF, which is a burden Malaysia has no equivalent of at all.
Two limits are worth stating plainly. This calculator covers Peninsular Malaysia only — Sabah and Sarawak run separate, lower scales — and it covers private saloon-type cars. Pick-ups, multi-purpose vehicles, motorcycles and commercial vehicles are on their own tables, and electric vehicles are taxed on power output rather than engine capacity.
10 Facts About Malaysian Road Tax
Road tax in Malaysia is called LKM — Lesen Kenderaan Motor.
Below 1,600cc the rate is flat, in four steps.
A 1,000cc car pays RM 20 a year. That is the whole bill.
At 1,601cc the scale switches to a base plus per-cc rate.
That one step more than doubles the annual tax.
Company-owned cars pay roughly double an individual’s rate.
The per-cc rate climbs from 40 sen to RM 4.50 across the bands.
Sabah and Sarawak run their own, lower scales.
The scale explains why so many cars sold there are 1.5 litres.
Singapore taxes a 1.0-litre engine roughly 20× harder.
Frequently Asked Questions
- In two quite different ways depending on engine size. Up to 1,600cc the tax is a flat amount for the whole band — RM 20 up to 1,000cc, RM 55 to 1,200cc, RM 70 to 1,400cc and RM 90 to 1,600cc for an individually owned private car. Above 1,600cc it becomes a base figure for the band plus a per-cubic-centimetre rate on everything over the band’s floor, and that per-cc rate steepens sharply as the engine grows.
- The single sharpest step in the table. A 1,600cc car pays RM 90 a year; a 1,601cc car pays RM 200 plus 40 sen for each cc above 1,600. One extra cubic centimetre more than doubles the annual bill, because the car crosses from the flat band into the progressive one. It is a large part of why so many models sold in Malaysia are engineered to sit at exactly 1.5 or 1.6 litres.
- JPJ runs a separate, higher scale for cars registered to a company rather than an individual. Below 1,600cc it is roughly double — RM 180 against RM 90 in the 1,401–1,600cc band — and above that both the band bases and the per-cc rates are substantially steeper. Switch the ownership selector to see the same engine under both scales.
- No. This calculator uses the Peninsular Malaysia scale only. Sabah and Sarawak have their own, materially lower rates, reflecting road conditions and distances in East Malaysia. If your vehicle is registered there, treat the figure here as an upper bound rather than your bill.
- It covers private saloon-type cars — saloons, hatchbacks, wagons and coupés. Multi-purpose vehicles, pick-ups and other non-saloon body types sit on separate JPJ scales, as do motorcycles and commercial vehicles. Electric vehicles are taxed on motor power output rather than engine capacity, so they are outside this calculator entirely.
- From JPJ’s own calculation guideline, the Garis Panduan Pengiraan Kadar Lesen Kenderaan Motor, as amended after Budget 2009. The full published scale is shown in the table beneath the result rather than hidden inside the tool, so you can check the band your car falls in and the arithmetic applied to it.
- The gap is enormous at the bottom and much smaller at the top, which surprises most people. Singapore taxes a 1.0-litre engine roughly twenty times harder than Peninsular Malaysia does. But the Malaysian scale climbs so much more steeply above 1,600cc that by three litres the ratio has collapsed to under two. The comparison line updates as you change the engine size.
- No, though they are usually renewed together and are often quoted as one figure by agents. Road tax is the statutory LKM licence paid to JPJ, calculated purely from engine capacity and ownership type. Motor insurance is a separate commercial premium priced on the vehicle, the driver and the claims history. This tool calculates only the first.
- The figures here are the annual rates from the published scale, which is how JPJ expresses them. Shorter renewal terms are available for some vehicle classes and are worked out pro rata from the annual figure, so dividing the result is a good approximation of a six-month term. Check the exact amount at renewal.
- Completely free, with no account and no usage limit. It runs entirely in your browser, collects no data, and keeps working offline once the page has loaded.
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