The trade a suspension makes
Suspension is the word the RDW uses in English. You register that the car will be off public roads for a fixed stretch of time, the car stays registered to you, and the card in your drawer stays valid. Nothing is cancelled and nothing is surrendered.
Three running costs stop at the same moment. Road tax (motorrijtuigenbelastingThe Dutch tax on vehicles, collected by the Belastingdienst. A suspended car is exempt, and the RDW passes word of the suspension on for you.) is no longer charged. Third party insurance (WA) is no longer required. The APK, the Dutch roadworthiness test, is allowed to lapse. None of this needs reporting to the Belastingdienst, because the RDW passes the suspension on itself. What it does to a tax bill already in flight is covered in what happens to road tax.
The car needs somewhere private to stand
Settle that question first, because it decides whether a suspension is available to you at all. The car has to be off the public road for every day of the term: a garage, a driveway, a private yard, a storage unit. A resident's parking bay on the street is still a public road. With nowhere private to put the car, a suspension is not on the table, however much the saving appeals.
Given somewhere to keep it, a suspension earns its fee when the car will sit unused for months and no sale is close. Leaving the country before a buyer appears is the common case, and the choices left for a car you cannot take with you covers the alternatives. When a sale is a week or two off, the fee is money spent for nothing, because none of it comes back.
Doing it online or at a counter
You have to be 18, or 16 in the case of a moped, and the car must be in your own name. Arranging one for somebody else is allowed, and then you need that person's registration card and the complete registration code. One thing to know in advance: a suspension starts as soon as it is granted. There is no backdating and no booking it for next month.
- Decide on 1, 2 or 3 years. At the end of the term you chose, the suspension expires on its own.
- Online: DigiD gets you in, then complete the form and pay by one of the methods the RDW accepts. The car is not suspended until the confirmation email arrives.
- Keep the second email. The end date is on it, and that email is your proof.
- At a counter: walk into a kentekenloket or an RDW location, no appointment needed, with the registration card, the registration code and your ID. An older car means the paper documents.
- The counter hands you a suspension report with the end date on it. On this route, that report is the proof.
One trap sits on the tax side. End a suspension inside the first month and the road tax for that period is owed after all, and the Belastingdienst collects it with a supplementary assessment.
What the fee rests on
There is a fee, and the current amount lives on rdw.nl. We leave the figure there because the RDW revises it from time to time. Four things decide what you pay: the weight of the car, which is the maximum authorised mass printed in box F.2 on the registration card, then its age, the kind of vehicle it is, and the term you ask for.
Stopping early brings none of it back. So look the amount up before choosing between one, two and three years. A three year suspension ended after four months has still been paid for in full.
What the car may do in the meantime
Almost nothing. The RDW is flat about it: a suspended car may not be parked on a public road and may not be driven on one. Leave it at the kerb and a fine is the likely outcome.
One exception exists, for the drive to a garage or a test station, an APK appointment being the obvious reason. Three conditions come attached. The car has to be insured that day. You travel the shortest route, close to the time of the appointment. And the confirmation of it travels with you.
On insurance, the RDW says you are free to end the policy, and in the same breath suggests asking your insurer first, since there are cases where keeping it is the better call. Theft and fire do not stop happening in a locked garage.
Selling a car that is still suspended
There is nothing to undo first. The RDW says the suspension lapses by itself at the moment the car is transferred into somebody else's name, so a buyer registering the car ends it as a side effect. The sale runs the ordinary way, laid out in the transfer at the RDW: the buyer puts the number into their own name, and the proof of transfer (vrijwaringsbewijsProof that a car has left your name. In a sale it comes back to you from the buyer, suspended car or not.) comes back to you.
From then on it is a normal registered car, and the obligations are the buyer's. WA cover from the day they register it. A valid APK before the car touches a public road. Tell the buyer the car has been suspended and pass on the most recent APK report if one exists, because a car that has stood still for two years is a different proposition from one driven last week. Mijn RDW is where the RDW sends you to confirm the current status.
Suspended cars are ordinary business for us. Mention it when you ask for an offer, and the collection is planned around a car that cannot be driven, at no extra cost and with nothing further for you to organise.
Extending it, or letting it lapse
Nothing renews itself. A reminder comes from the RDW by post or into your Message Box, and acting on it is down to you. Ask inside 6 weeks of the end date and the new term runs from that date, not from the day you asked, so no time goes missing.
Let it lapse and the APK, the insurance and the road tax duties all switch back on from the end date, whether or not the car has moved an inch. Falling short on any of the three invites a fine. However the suspension finishes, the car needs tax, insurance and a valid test before it may use a public road again.