Vehicle and bike registration check, token tax and transfer

Motor vehicle registration in Pakistan is a provincial subject. There is no single national vehicle database open to the public: a Punjab registration is verified on the Punjab Excise MTMIS, a Sindh registration on the Sindh Excise portal, and so on. Buying a used car means checking the record of the province printed on the registration book, not the province you live in.

A verification query returns the chassis and engine number, make and model, registration date, owner name (usually partly masked) and — most usefully — whether token tax is paid up to date. That last field is what protects a buyer: unpaid token tax follows the vehicle, not the seller.

Token tax itself is an annual provincial tax based on engine capacity, and several provinces now bundle it with income tax and professional tax collection at payment time. Punjab collects through its e-Pay Punjab channel, which also handles many other provincial fees from a mobile banking app.

Transfer of ownership must be filed with the same excise office that holds the record, with the seller's and buyer's CNICs, the original registration book, a sale agreement and biometric verification in provinces that require it. Until the transfer is recorded, challans and tax liabilities stay with the registered owner — which is why sellers should verify the transfer went through afterwards.