The bill follows the register, not the odometer
Road tax is a charge for having a vehicle registered in your name. A car that spends the year on a driveway is taxed like one doing a daily commute. Registration is the trigger: once a vehicle stands in your name, the Belastingdienst starts billing without being asked, either by direct debit or by an assessment every three months.
What you pay turns on the vehicle itself, which means its type, its weight, its fuel and how much it pollutes. The rules for electric and hybrid cars have moved repeatedly and will move again, so the only figure worth trusting is this year's one for your own car on belastingdienst.nl. That is why no amounts appear anywhere in this guide.
Your liability ends at the transfer, not the handshake
There is usually a gap between agreeing a price and the registration actually moving, and road tax lives on the second of those. As far as the register is concerned the sale completes when the buyer puts the car into their own name. The RDW, the Dutch vehicle authority, learns of it immediately and passes it on, and the Belastingdienst stops charging you from that date.
Which is the whole reason for keeping hold of the car until the proof of transfer (vrijwaringsbewijsThe slip proving the registration has moved. The date on it is the date the Belastingdienst works back from when it stops billing you.) is in your hand. A car that has driven off without being transferred is still yours on paper, and everything attached to it, tax and insurance both, is still yours as well. Confirming the transfer went through covers how to check.
What comes back, and the two cases where nothing does
There is no claim to submit. The Belastingdienst works out the months you had already paid for beyond the transfer date and returns them, and paying by direct debit makes no difference to that.
Two cases produce nothing. Very small sums are not paid out at all. And a car on the oldtimer transitional scheme gets no road tax back when it is sold.
If you are closing your Dutch bank account on the way out of the country, raise it with the Belastingdienst before the account goes. A refund has to land somewhere, and a shut account is not somewhere.
An assessment arriving after the sale is not a mistake
Road tax is paid ahead, so a demand covering weeks that fall before the transfer can reach you once the car has gone. The Belastingdienst is blunt about this: pay a road tax bill for a car you have already sold. It belongs to the period it covers, and that period was yours.
Direct debit asks nothing of you. There is no mandate to cancel in order to be refunded, because the payment runs on its own. If nothing has appeared a few weeks on, or the sums look wrong, contact the Belastingdienst with the registration number and the date on your proof of transfer.
Suspension switches the tax off, with two catches
A registration that is suspended, geschorst in Dutch, carries no road tax. You arrange it with the RDW, online or over a counter. The RDW notifies the Belastingdienst, and the charge stops with no further paperwork from you. Insurance and APK obligations fall away at the same time. The price is that the car cannot stand on a public road for the whole of that period.
Two conditions catch people out. End a suspension inside its first month and the road tax for that month is owed after all, arriving as a supplementary assessment. And the RDW fee for suspending is not given back if you cut the term short. Selling the car ends a suspension by itself, the moment the registration moves. Suspending your car has the rest of the rules.
Export, and the point at which the charge ends
The RDW puts the end of the road tax obligation at the moment the vehicle is registered for export. Export plates then allow 14 days of driving here, and no road tax falls due across them either. Taking the car out of the country runs through the whole procedure.
On getting back tax you had already paid, there is nothing solid to offer you: the Belastingdienst page about selling a vehicle does not deal with the export case. Ask the Belastingdienst directly and go by what they tell you.