# Car Depreciation Calculator — Resale Value by Country

> Estimate what your car is worth today and years from now. The depreciation rate follows official US and Dutch schedules, or your market's OECD tier.

- **Category:** Finance & Money
- **Calculator:** https://youcalc.com/en/finance-money/car-depreciation/
- **Price:** Free · no sign-up

## About this calculator

A new car in the United States keeps about 82% of its price after one year and roughly a third after five, on the depreciation schedule the Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes for automobiles. In the Netherlands the tax authority's own official table puts the first-year loss at 36% — twice the American figure. And across the 30 countries Storchmann surveyed for Transportation in 2004, cars in non-OECD markets lost value at roughly half the OECD rate. Depreciation is not a universal constant, which is why this calculator asks which country you are selling in before it answers. Give it the price you paid, the year the car was first registered and the year you bought it, and it estimates what the car is worth today, what it will be worth after the number of years you choose, and what that loss costs you per year.

## How to read your results

The headline is what your car is worth today. Underneath it sit the value at the end of your chosen horizon, the total lost since you bought it, and the share of the price you still hold. The rate strip shows the numbers driving everything: the annual rate for your market, the first-year rate — deliberately separate, because the first year of a car's life behaves differently from the years that follow — the average loss per year, and the single worst year. The chart plots the model as a solid line and, for the United States and the Netherlands, draws that country's official published schedule beside it as a dashed line, so you can hold the estimate against the official curve instead of taking our word for it. Where the American dashed line dives toward zero it is measuring a whole cohort of cars including the ones that were scrapped; your car is a single asset, so the solid line is the one to read. Everywhere else there is no dashed line to draw, because no national schedule exists to draw: the rate is then the OECD or non-OECD tier average, which is an average of countries rather than a measurement of yours. The line under the chart says which of those you are looking at, and whether the projection has run past the evidence. Four limits go with the number. It is a real, inflation-adjusted figure — BEA's schedules are explicitly "in the absence of inflation", so a nominal resale price ten years out will be higher than the figure shown. It is not a valuation of your specific car: mileage, condition, service history, colour, trim, accident record and model-specific demand all move the real price and none of them are inputs, because age and market are what the published evidence supports. It is not the BEA cohort curve either — Table B reaches 0.0000 at age 13 because it nets in scrappage, so it is read for the early-year shape and level only, with the US rates fitted to its age-1 and age-5 values and nothing taken from its tail. And beyond age 10 it is extrapolation: every official schedule that exists is driven to zero by construction (BEA at 13 years, the Dutch table at 18, when a car becomes BPM-exempt) and none of them models the floor a surviving car keeps. There is no electric-vehicle adjustment either, for the reason given below.

## How it's calculated

Value follows a geometric (declining-balance) decline with a separate first-year rate, re-based to the age at purchase: R(a) = 1 − f·a for the first year, then R(a) = (1 − f)·(1 − r)^(a − 1), and value(a) = price paid × R(a) ÷ R(age at purchase). Geometric because Storchmann (2004) reports that geometric depreciation approximates real automobile depreciation well; a separate first year because the two markets with a published schedule disagree about it by roughly a factor of two while agreeing closely afterwards. The US parameters are solved directly from BEA Table B — f = 1 − 0.8208 from the age-1 value, and r from 0.8208 × (1 − r)⁴ = 0.3258, the age-5 value — so both anchors reproduce exactly. The Dutch parameters come from the Belastingdienst forfaitaire table: 36% at 12 months, fitted to 81% depreciated at 9 years 6 months. Every other country takes its tier average from Storchmann — about 31% a year for OECD markets against about 15% for non-OECD ones. Those are his corrected-price figures, which he notes run substantially higher than the uncorrected ones, so they are not used raw: both are scaled by the single factor that maps his OECD average onto the rate BEA measured from US used-car transaction prices. That anchors the level on measured prices while preserving his OECD-to-non-OECD ratio — the finding this calculator actually relies on — exactly. Choosing a light truck, SUV or pickup multiplies the annual rate by BEA's published light-truck rate of 0.1925 over the fitted automobile rate, which lands a US light truck exactly on the published 19.25%; in the two measured markets the first-year figure is left alone, because BEA publishes no light-truck equivalent. The honest headline on that switch: vehicle type moves the answer by about one percentage point a year, while country moves it by more than ten. Inside the first year the fall is linear, which is a stated modelling choice: no source resolves the sub-annual shape. Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Israel sit in the non-OECD tier because the rate comes from Storchmann's 2004 sample and that is where his sample placed them, all four having joined the OECD after publication. The currency is a label only — nothing is converted, and the schedule is identical whichever you pick.

## Worked example

- **Your inputs:** A 40,000 car bought new in the United States, projected forward five years.
- **Results:** It is worth 32,832 after one year (the BEA age-1 value of 0.8208), and 13,032 at five years old (the age-5 value of 0.3258) — 32.6% of what you paid. That is 26,968 lost over five years, an average of 5,394 a year, and the single worst year is the first one, at 7,168. Switch the country to Pakistan and the same car on the non-OECD tier rate keeps far more: the rate falls from 20.63% a year to 9.98%.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much does a car depreciate per year?

It depends on the country far more than on the car. On the BEA's published US automobile schedule the fitted rate is about 20.6% a year after a first-year loss of 17.9%. The Dutch tax authority's official table implies about 13.3% a year after a much steeper 36% first year. Across Storchmann's 30-country study, OECD markets depreciated at roughly twice the non-OECD rate — which works out here as about 20.6% against about 10.0% a year once both are scaled onto the level BEA measured from real transaction prices.

### How much value does a new car lose in the first year?

About 18% in the United States, on BEA's Table B figure of 0.8208 retained at age one. In the Netherlands the Belastingdienst's forfaitaire table puts it at 36% — 33% at nine months plus 1% for each of the next three. Those are the only two markets with a published national schedule, so everywhere else this calculator applies the country's tier rate to the first year too, rather than inventing a first-year figure that nobody has measured.

### Is the rate for my country measured, or an average?

Only two countries publish an official age-to-value schedule: the United States, in the Bureau of Economic Analysis's Table B for automobiles, and the Netherlands, in the Belastingdienst's forfaitaire table. Choose either and the curve is fitted to a national measurement, and the official schedule is drawn beside it as a dashed line. Choose anywhere else and you get a tier average — Storchmann's OECD or non-OECD figure, from 54 car models across 30 countries, scaled onto the level BEA measured — which is an average of countries, not a measurement of yours. The note under the chart says so on every result it applies to. Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Israel sit in the non-OECD tier for the same reason: that is where Storchmann's 2004 sample placed them, and all four joined the OECD after publication.

### Why does the dashed US line fall so much faster than the estimate?

Because the two lines measure different things. The dashed line is BEA Table B, re-based to what you paid: it tracks a whole cohort of automobiles and nets in scrappage, so it reaches zero at age 13 — a surviving 13-year-old car is obviously not worth nothing. BEA's own methodology note warns that a cohort profile is more convex than a single asset's. The model is therefore fitted to that curve's age-1 and age-5 values only, and nothing is taken from its tail. Read the solid line for your car and the dashed one as the published cohort measurement it is; where they part company, that gap is scrappage.

### Why does the calculator ask for two years instead of one?

Because buying used re-bases the whole curve. If you paid 15,000 for a three-year-old car, that 15,000 is pinned to age three, and the projection runs down the much flatter section of the curve from there rather than pretending you paid a new-car price. Asking only for the car's age would force you to guess what it cost new, and the guess would drive the answer.

### Is this the same as a valuation of my car?

No. It estimates from age and market only. Mileage, condition, service history, colour, trim, accident record and model-specific demand all move the real price, and none of them are inputs here — nothing in the published evidence supports a coefficient for them. Treat the figure as the shape of the curve your car is on, not as an offer.

### Are the figures adjusted for inflation?

They are real figures, in today's money. BEA defines a depreciation profile as how an asset's price falls "in the absence of inflation", so that is what the model reproduces. If you compare our ten-year figure against a nominal used-car advert a decade from now, the gap between them is inflation, not an error.

### Can I use my own depreciation rate?

Yes — the rate field is editable, and if you know your local market better than an international average does, use it. In the two measured markets the first-year rate rescales in proportion, so the shape we measured survives your change. Any result built on your own rate is labelled "custom rate — not our estimate" on the page and in every PDF or image you export, so a screenshot can never be mistaken for our sourced figure.

### Does it adjust for electric cars?

No, and that is deliberate. EV depreciation is widely reported to differ from petrol and diesel, but no authoritative, non-calculator source publishes a rate we could turn into a multiplier — so none is invented here. An EV result is the same age-and-market curve as any other car, and should be read as the market average it is rather than as an EV-specific figure.

### Why does the projection stop being reliable after ten years?

Because the evidence stops. The US schedule is fitted on ages one to five and the Dutch table runs to nine years six months; past age ten the model is extrapolating, and the calculator says so. It is also why the model is never fitted to BEA's own tail: Table B reaches zero at age 13 because it measures a cohort and nets in scrappage, and BEA's methodology note warns that a cohort profile is more convex than a single asset's. A surviving 13-year-old car is obviously not worth nothing.

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## Sources

- https://apps.bea.gov/national/pdf/Fixed_Assets_1925_97.pdf — U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:PORT.0000037087.10954.72 — Springer Nature Link
- https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/papers/Revised%20Geo%20Depr%20Gamma%20Lifespans.pdf — U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
- https://www.belastingdienst.nl/wps/wcm/connect/bldcontentnl/belastingdienst/prive/auto_en_vervoer/belastingen_op_auto_en_motor/bpm/bpm_berekenen_en_betalen/afschrijving_met_koerslijst_taxatierapport_of_forfaitaire_tabel/afschrijving_met_forfaitaire_tabel — Belastingdienst

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