Suppose that you’re going overseas for a long period. And also suppose that for the time that you’re away, your car is doing nothing else but sitting snugly in its parking lot. While you could just throw up your arms and bemoan not being able to drive your vehicle, you could take steps to lighten the financial burden it’ll normally impose on you.

To lay up a vehicle is temporarily cease its licence. For the duration of this cessation, the good news is … well, we’ll come to that later. First, the requirements and constraints.

• Your car cannot be used or kept on a public road or public space.

• It will lose its eligibility for PARF benefit (so you might want to think again about laying up if you car is under ten years of age).

• When you apply to lay up your vehicle, you’d have to indicate the location at which your car will be garaged. It is an offence if your car is not found at the reported location.

• If your car needs to be moved from its reported location, please inform the Registrar of Vehicles. It is an offence not to do so.

• Take care not to lay up your vehicle for more than three years. It will be de-registered if you exceed this threshold. And furthermore, any vehicle that has been de-registered for this reason cannot be re-registered again.

Now for the good news. For the duration that your car is laid up, you’re exempted from paying road tax.

After weighing the pros and cons, we feel that people most likely to consider laying up their vehicles could be owners of big cars older than ten years. You’d be surprised just how much road tax a big car chalks up. 

Just for the fun of it, we used our road tax calculator to compute road tax payable for a six-litre, 11-year-old car – came to almost $9,000 a year! So if you happen to be abroad for say two years, by laying up your six-litre behemoth, you can save up to $18,000. But then again, if you’re driving such a huge limousine, $18,000 may not be that much to you right?

If you have changed any of your following particulars, you’ll have to notify the Land Transport Authority.

1. Name
2. Passport Number
3. NRIC Number
4. Nationality
5. Address

Fill up LTA’s Notification of Change of Particulars Application Form, attach the relevant supporting documents, then fax the whole bunch to 6553 5329 or mail them to LTA at 10 Sin Ming Drive, Singapore 575701.