Comprehensive Seller’s Guide to COE, PARF, PQP, and Car Value in Singapore (2026)

The Baseline Costs: OMV and ARF

To understand how much money you get back when you sell or scrap your car, you first have to understand how it was taxed when it was brand new.

The OMV (Open Market Value) is the raw, factory price of your car before the Singapore government adds any taxes. It includes the purchase price, freight, insurance, and delivery charges to bring the car into the country. Think of the OMV as what the car is actually worth to the rest of the world. Assessed by Singapore Customs, it includes the purchase price, freight, insurance, and delivery charges required to bring the car into the country.

Based on that OMV, the government charges the ARF (Additional Registration Fee). This is a tiered tax, meaning the more expensive your car is, the heavier the tax. The ARF is the primary reason cars in Singapore are so expensive. Currently, the ARF tiered structure is calculated as follows:

First $20,000 OMV: 100% of OMV

Next $20,000 (OMV $20,001–$40,000): 140% of OMV

Next $20,000 (OMV $40,001–$60,000): 190% of OMV

Next $20,000 (OMV $60,001–$80,000): 250% of OMV

Above $80,000 OMV: 320% of OMV

However, as a seller, a high ARF is actually good news when you are ready to sell the car, because it directly impacts your rebate - the government returns a significant portion of the ARF you paid as a cash rebate when you deregister the car before it turns 10 years old.

The Seller's Payout: PARF, Body Value, and Deregistration

This is the most important section for sellers. If you deregister your car before it turns 10 years old, you get money back from the government. This is called your PARF (Preferential Additional Registration Fee) rebate.

Think of the PARF rebate as a partial refund of the ARF tax you paid when the car was brand new. The younger the vehicle, the higher the rebate. For cars registered before February 2026, the returns are relatively generous: deregistering under five years old gets you 75% of your ARF back, gradually dropping to 50% by the time it hits nine to ten years old.  

However, the government significantly revamped the PARF scheme in Budget 2026. Because the growing adoption of electric vehicles reduced the environmental need to encourage early deregistration, rebates for any car registered from February 2026 onwards were slashed by 45 percentage points, and the maximum payout cap was halved to $30,000. Under these new rules, a car deregistered under five years old receives just 30% of its ARF, plummeting to a mere 5% in its final year. Regardless of when your car was registered, once it passes its tenth birthday, the PARF rebate drops to absolute zero.  

But the PARF rebate is only half the story. The other component is your vehicle's Body Value (sometimes referred to as its export or scrap value). This represents the actual physical worth of your car's metal, components, and salvageable parts. If you happen to own a model that is highly sought after in overseas markets, used car exporters will often pay a handsome premium for its Body Value just to ship it abroad.

When you add your PARF rebate, your pro-rated COE refund, and your car's Body Value together, you arrive at your Deregistration Value.

This figure is the absolute minimum baseline of what your car is worth. You should never sell your vehicle to a dealer or a direct buyer for anything less than this amount. Why? Because your Deregistration Value is the guaranteed cash you would receive if you simply submitted the paperwork and scrapped or exported the car yourself. If a dealer offers you less, they aren't giving you a fair deal—they are simply taking your car at a discount, deregistering it themselves, and pocketing the difference as pure profit.