---
title: "Bill of Sale for a Car: The Half That Is Federal"
description: "The form is the least important part. The odometer disclosure that travels with it is federal, mandatory and enforceable — which is why the blank line matters more than the template."
url: "https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/bill-of-sale-for-a-car/"
type: "article"
published: "2026-08-28"
modified: "2026-08-28"
site: "Baron Auto"
disclaimer: "This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership."
---

# Bill of Sale for a Car: The Half That Is Federal

> The form is the least important part. The odometer disclosure that travels with it is federal, mandatory and enforceable — which is why the blank line matters more than the template.

*Used Car Buying · 24 min read · 5,382 words*

## The short version

- A bill of sale is a creature of state law, and what one state demands is not what its neighbour demands. The odometer disclosure that travels with it is federal, applies in every state, and is the half with enforcement behind it.
- 49 CFR Part 580 fixes what that disclosure must contain: the reading at the moment of transfer, the date of transfer, both parties’ printed names and current addresses, and the vehicle’s make, model, year, body type and VIN.
- The buyer is not a bystander to it. Part 580 requires the transferee to sign the disclosure, print their name and make a copy available to the seller — and it forbids one person signing as both sides of the same transfer.
- Old vehicles do fall out of the requirement, and the cliff moved. A vehicle of model year 2010 or earlier is exempt once it is transferred ten years after the start of its model year; from model year 2011 the wait is twenty.
- A false mileage certification made with intent to defraud carries a private right of action under 49 U.S.C. §32710: treble damages or $10,000, whichever is greater, plus costs and a reasonable fee, brought within two years. The floor was $1,500 until 2012.
- Never sign a blank odometer line, a blank buyer field, or a title with no transferee named on it. Each of those is the moment the paperwork stops protecting you.

Search this question and you get forms. Hundreds of them — PDF and Word, state-branded, watermarked, gated behind an email address, all of them essentially the same page with the same handful of boxes.

The form is the least interesting part of this. You can write a serviceable bill of sale on a sheet of paper in four minutes, and the version your state publishes for free is better than any of the downloads because it is the one the clerk at the counter has been trained to accept. What almost nobody explains is the thing that actually decides whether the paperwork is worth anything afterwards.

It is this. A bill of sale is a state matter, and the requirements genuinely differ from state to state. But the odometer disclosure that travels with it — the mileage line, the one everybody treats as a formality — is federal, mandatory on almost every vehicle changing hands, prescribed in detail by regulation, and backed by a damages provision that starts at five figures. Those are two different legal animals sharing one moment, and the difference is worth more to you than any template.

## One handshake, two different legal animals

A bill of sale is a private record of a transaction. It says who sold what to whom, for how much, on what day, and on what terms. It is evidence, nothing more and nothing less — the written version of a conversation that would otherwise exist only in two people’s memories, which is exactly where it becomes useless the moment those memories diverge.

The odometer disclosure is something else entirely. It is not a record of your agreement; it is a certification made to the world, on the title document, about the condition of the vehicle. The transferor signs a statement about the mileage. The transferee signs to acknowledge it. That statement enters the state title record and stays there, becoming one line in the permanent mileage chain that follows the car through every subsequent owner.

People conflate the two because they happen at the same kitchen table, and the conflation runs in the wrong direction. The typical buyer treats the bill of sale as the serious document and the mileage box as an administrative nuisance. It is the other way round. Get the bill of sale slightly wrong and you have a paperwork problem you can usually fix by contacting the seller. Get the odometer disclosure wrong — or let someone else get it wrong on purpose — and you own a car whose title record now says something false about it, which is a problem you will discover when you try to sell.

## The state half, and why there is no table of fifty states here

Whether you need a bill of sale at all depends on where the vehicle will be titled. Some states require one to register a private-party purchase. Some require it only for vehicles without a title. Some require it on their own numbered form and will reject anything else. Some require notarisation. Some require the price stated because they assess tax on the sale, and some assess tax on their own valuation regardless of what you wrote. Some want a separate odometer statement because their title has no space for one.

You will find articles that reduce all of that to a table. This site does not publish one, and the reason is not laziness.

**State-by-state tables age into being confidently wrong.** Every entry in one is a live rule that a legislature or an agency can change in a session, and nothing about a stale table looks stale — it reads exactly as authoritative on the day it is wrong as on the day it was right. The failure mode is specific and expensive: you arrive at the counter with the document the table told you to bring, and the clerk tells you it is not the document, and the transfer does not happen that day. Check your own motor vehicle agency’s site the week you buy, and take the form from there rather than from a template site.

Two practical consequences follow. First, if you are buying across a state line, the requirement that governs is the one in the state where the vehicle will be titled and registered, not the one where the money changed hands. Confirm that state’s list before you drive, because the seller has no reason to know it and no obligation to care.

Second, when a state publishes its own bill of sale form, use it. Not because a home-made document is invalid, but because a state form is pre-agreed: it asks for exactly the fields that agency wants, in the order that agency expects, and it eliminates the entire category of argument where a counter clerk decides your version is missing something.

The general shape of a private-party transfer — who signs what, in what order, and what the buyer does afterwards — is covered in our guide to [buying a car from a private seller](https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/buying-a-car-from-a-private-seller/). This page is about the document itself.

## The federal half does not vary, and it is written down

Here is the part that is the same in every state, on every private sale and every dealer sale, whatever your local agency does or does not require.

Federal regulation at 49 CFR Part 580 requires the transferor of a motor vehicle to disclose the mileage to the transferee in connection with the transfer of ownership, on the title itself or on the document being used to reassign it. The disclosure must be signed by the transferor and carry their printed name. Beyond the signature, the regulation prescribes exactly what has to appear:

- **The odometer reading at the time of transfer**, not including tenths of a mile.
- **The date of transfer.**
- **The transferor’s printed name and current address.**
- **The transferee’s printed name and current address.**
- **The identity of the vehicle** — make, model, year, body type and vehicle identification number.

On top of that, the seller must certify one of three things, and only one. Either the reading reflects the actual mileage to the best of their knowledge; or the reading exceeds the odometer’s designed mechanical limit, which is the case where the display has run past its maximum and started again; or the reading is not the actual mileage and should not be relied upon, in which case the disclosure must also carry a warning that a discrepancy exists. That third certification is the one that follows the vehicle in the title record for the rest of its life, and it is put in front of you before you buy precisely so you can decide what it is worth to you.

The document must also carry a statement referencing federal law and warning that failing to complete the disclosure, or providing false information, may result in fines or imprisonment. That sentence is on the title in front of you. It is not decoration.

Not every vehicle is inside the requirement, though the exemptions are narrow — and the age one moved in a way most people have not caught up with. A vehicle manufactured in or before the 2010 model year is exempt once it is transferred at least ten years after the start of the calendar year matching its model year. A vehicle manufactured in or after the 2011 model year is exempt only after twenty. The regulation supplies its own worked examples, which is a rare kindness and worth reading if you are near the boundary. The effect is a two-tier system: the older cohort aged out of the disclosure regime on a decade’s clock, while everything from 2011 onward stays inside it for twice as long.

The remaining exemptions are structural rather than temporal. Vehicles that are not self-propelled — trailers, in practice — sit outside it, as do heavy vehicles above the gross vehicle weight rating named in the rule, which is why a commercial truck transfer looks different. And a manufacturer transferring a genuinely new vehicle before its first non-resale transfer does not disclose, which is why a new car arrives without one. Two things follow for a buyer. If the car is old enough to be exempt, the absence of a disclosure is not a red flag and should not be read as one. If it is not old enough to be exempt, the absence of one is the entire flag.

## The buyer signs it too, and both parties keep a copy

This is the part that surprises people, and it is the reason a used-car buyer should read Part 580 rather than assume it is the seller’s problem.

On receiving the transferor’s signed disclosure, the transferee — you, the buyer — must sign the disclosure statement, print their name on it, and make a copy available to the transferor. Where the disclosure sits on an electronic title, the state has to provide a means of making copies available to both parties. So the mileage line is not a thing done to you. It is a document you execute, and the copy duty runs from buyer to seller, not the other way around.

The regulation also closes the most obvious loophole. No person may sign an odometer disclosure as both the transferor and the transferee in the same transaction, except under the narrow power-of-attorney provisions the rule sets out for cases where the title is not physically present. In plain terms: nobody gets to fill in both halves. If someone offers to “handle the paperwork” by signing both sides, what is being proposed is not a convenience.

**Take a photograph of the completed disclosure before you leave.** Both signatures, both printed names, the reading, the date, and the certification box that was ticked. The federal copy duty is satisfied by handing the seller a copy, and a photograph on your phone costs nothing and survives the envelope you will lose. If the transfer is happening electronically, save the confirmation the state issues.

The same discipline belongs on the bill of sale, and here it is worth being clear about which copy does the harder work. Yours proves what was bought and on what terms — useful in a dispute, useful at the titling counter. The seller’s copy answers a different question, and it answers it under pressure: *when did this stop being my car?* That question arrives as a parking ticket, a toll notice, a speed camera, an abandoned-vehicle letter or a claim after a collision, all addressed to whoever the state still shows as the registered owner. A bill of sale with a date, a time and two signatures is the answer.

So if you are selling, keep your copy somewhere you will find it in a year, and file the notice of transfer or release of liability that most states let you submit online the same day — neither document substitutes for the other, and you want both. If you are buying, hand the seller their copy without being asked. It costs you nothing, and a seller who can prove when they stopped owning the car has no reason to come looking for you later.

## Why the mileage line is the part with teeth

Above the regulation sits a statute, and the statute is why a blank or falsified odometer line belongs in a different category from a missing address field.

Under 49 U.S.C. §32710, a person who violates the odometer chapter or a regulation issued under it, *with intent to defraud*, is liable for three times the actual damages or $10,000, whichever is greater. A private person may bring that action in a federal district court or another court of competent jurisdiction, not later than two years after the claim accrues, and the court must award costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee where judgment is entered for that person.

Read the three features of that provision separately, because each one changes the practical picture.

| Feature | What it actually does |
| --- | --- |
| Treble damages or a fixed floor, whichever is greater | The floor matters more than the multiplier on an ordinary used car. A rollback that costs you a couple of thousand dollars of value trebles to something modest; the statutory floor is what makes the claim worth bringing at all. Congress raised that floor in 2012, and the $1,500 it replaced had stood for decades — long enough to make most rollback claims quietly uneconomic to bring. |
| Fee shifting | Costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee are awarded to a person who wins. That is what makes it possible to find representation for a claim whose face value would never justify hourly billing, and it is the single most consequential sentence in the section. |
| Intent to defraud | The limit on all of it. An honest mistake — a transposed digit, a seller who genuinely believed the reading — is not this claim. The provision reaches the person who knew and signed anyway. |

Set that against the bill of sale. If your bill of sale omits the seller’s address, you have an incomplete record and an inconvenience. If the seller certified a mileage they knew to be false, you have a federal cause of action with a fee-shifting provision attached. Those two documents were signed at the same table, minutes apart, and they are not remotely equivalent.

NHTSA maintains public guidance on [odometer fraud](https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/odometer-fraud), including how to report a suspected case. Reporting and suing are separate tracks and you can do both.

## Never sign a blank

If you take one instruction from this page, take this one. There are three blanks that people sign every weekend, and each of them converts a protective document into an unprotective one.

**A blank odometer line.** Signing a disclosure with the mileage box empty means certifying whatever number is written into it later, by someone who is not you. There is no version of this that is administratively convenient and no reason to accept it. The reading goes in first, in front of both of you, copied off the dash you are both looking at.

**A blank transferee field.** A title signed by the seller with no buyer named is an “open title”, and it exists to let the middle party disappear. The car gets bought and sold on without ever being titled in the intermediary’s name, which defeats the entire point of a title record: there is no trace of the person who owned it during the interesting period. If you are the buyer, an open title also leaves the previous registered owner on the state’s books, holding liability for a car you are driving. Both sides lose. Your name goes in the box before anyone signs anything.

**A pre-signed assignment.** If the title arrives already signed in the assignment section by someone who is not the person standing in front of you, stop. You are being offered a vehicle by someone who is not the recorded owner, using a document signed by a person you have never met. That is the shape of a curbstoned sale, and it is also the shape of a car with an undisclosed problem that somebody wanted at arm’s length from their own name.

The corollary is about corrections. Many states reject a title with crossings-out or overwriting in the assignment or odometer sections, and a rejected title means a duplicate application and weeks of delay. Write slowly, write once, and if a genuine error happens do not scribble over it — ask the agency what they want before either of you improvises.

## What belongs on it, and why each line earns its place

A bill of sale that does its job is short. Every line below exists because of a specific argument it prevents.

| What you write | Why it earns its place |
| --- | --- |
| The VIN, transcribed from the car | The only unambiguous identifier in the whole document. A make or model can be typed wrong and the mistake survives unnoticed for years; a VIN is checkable, character by character, against the dash, the door jamb and the title. Copy it from the vehicle, not from the advert. |
| Year, make, model and body type | The same identifiers the federal odometer disclosure demands, so the two documents describe the same car in the same words. A mismatch between them is a question you do not want asked at a counter. |
| The odometer reading, in figures and in words | Figures can be altered by a pen stroke. Words cannot be altered quietly. This should match the federal disclosure exactly, and if it does not, the discrepancy is the whole story. |
| The date and the time | The date is when responsibility moves. The time is what settles who owned the car when the parking ticket, the toll or the collision happened that afternoon. |
| The purchase price and the method of payment | Tax is assessed on it in most states, and the payment method is your record of what actually moved. “Cash” with no receipt is the version of this line that helps nobody. |
| Full legal names and addresses of both parties | Copied from the photo identification you have both just looked at, and matched against the name printed on the title. If the person taking your money is not the person on the title, the transaction is over. |
| An as-is statement, if that is the deal | It is nearly always the deal in a private sale. Writing it down removes the later argument about what either of you understood. |
| Any specific representation you are relying on | If the seller told you the timing belt was done last year, or that the car has never been in an accident, write it as a sentence. A spoken claim is a memory; a written one is evidence. |
| Both signatures, on two copies | So each party leaves with an original rather than a promise to send one. |

What does not belong on it: anything you have not verified, and anything phrased as a guess. “Mileage believed accurate” on a document where the federal disclosure already carries a formal certification is noise at best and a hedge at worst.

## As is, and the two things it cannot do

An as-is clause disclaims implied warranties. The main one is the implied warranty of merchantability — the default promise that goods are fit for the ordinary purpose they are sold for, which for a car means it drives. It is state law, adopted in some form nearly everywhere, and it arises where the seller is a merchant in goods of that kind.

That last condition is the reason the clause behaves differently depending on who is selling. A private individual selling their own car is not a merchant, so in most states there is no implied warranty of merchantability to disclaim in the first place. The as-is wording still earns its place, because what it removes is the later argument about what was understood — but it is not creating protection the seller lacked. A dealer is a different case: there the disclaimer has real work to do, it lives on the Buyers Guide in the window — the form the FTC’s Used Car Rule at 16 CFR Part 455 requires a dealer to display — rather than in the bill of sale, and it interacts with rules that are covered in our guide to [whether a used car comes with a warranty](https://baronauto1.com/buying-guides/does-a-used-car-come-with-a-warranty/).

Now the two limits, which apply to every as-is sale regardless of who is selling.

**As is does not cover fraud.** Selling a car without a warranty is not the same as being free to lie about it. A seller who states the car has never been in an accident while knowing it has, or who conceals a branded title, or who papers over a known structural repair, has done something no as-is clause repairs. The clause allocates the risk of unknown faults. It does not license known misrepresentation.

**As is does not cover a false odometer statement.** This one is categorical. The odometer disclosure is not a term of your private contract that the two of you are free to vary; it is a federal certification made on a state title document. You cannot contract out of it, an as-is clause does not reach it, and a signed line reading “sold as is, mileage not guaranteed” does not convert a knowing false certification into an honest one. That is the practical value of understanding the split this page opened with: the half of the paperwork the seller can shape with wording, and the half they cannot.

## A bill of sale is not a title

Two documents, two jobs, and they are not interchangeable.

The title is the state’s record of who owns the vehicle. It is issued by a government agency, it is printed on secure stock precisely so that alterations are visible, and transferring it is what transfers ownership. The bill of sale is the parties’ record of the transaction that prompted the transfer. It evidences that a sale happened, on what terms, for how much. It does not, on its own, make you the owner.

In practice this means a bill of sale will not get you a registration in most states without the assigned title alongside it. It also means the phrase “I’ll give you a bill of sale, the title is coming” describes a transaction where you have paid for a car and received a receipt. Sometimes the explanation is genuine — a lienholder still holds the title, a duplicate has been applied for. Sometimes it is not. Either way the answer is the same: the money moves when the title does.

The title also carries information the bill of sale never will. Brands, in particular. A salvage, rebuilt, flood or lemon designation lives on the title record and follows the vehicle across state lines, and our guide to [what a clean title actually means](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/what-is-a-clean-title/) sets out what the word does and does not promise. No bill of sale, however carefully drafted, tells you any of that.

## Notarisation: what it adds, and what it does not

Some states require a notarised bill of sale or a notarised title assignment for a private vehicle transfer. Where yours does, there is nothing to decide — find out before the day, because a notary you have to locate afterwards means a second meeting with a stranger who has already got your money.

What notarisation does is authenticate the signature. A notary confirms that the person who signed is who they claimed to be, that they signed in the notary’s presence, and that they appeared to do so willingly. That is a genuine protection against the specific fraud of a forged signature, and against the later claim that somebody never signed at all.

What it does not do is authenticate the content. A notary does not read the document for accuracy, does not verify that the mileage is real, does not check the VIN against the car, and does not warrant that the seller owns what they are selling. A notarised document containing a lie is a notarised lie. Treat the stamp as a check on identity, which is valuable, and not as a check on truth, which it never was.

One procedural note that catches people out: the signature has to be made in front of the notary. A document signed at the roadside and carried to a notary afterwards is not what the requirement asks for, and some notaries will refuse it. Both parties, identification in hand, pens uncapped on arrival.

## If the seller will not provide one

Separate the two halves again, because the right response differs.

If the seller will not sign a bill of sale, that is a warning but not necessarily a fatal one — in a state that does not require one, a private seller may genuinely see it as unnecessary rather than as something to avoid. The answer is to write it yourself, in plain language, and hand them a pen. It takes four minutes, it costs nothing, and their reaction tells you what you need to know. A seller who will not put in writing what they have just said out loud has told you that they do not want it in writing.

If the seller will not complete the odometer disclosure on a vehicle that is not exempt, that is different in kind. They are not declining a courtesy; they are declining a federal requirement that is a condition of the title transfer, on a document that warns them in printed text about fines and imprisonment. There is no benign reading of it and no version where you proceed anyway. Walk.

**The pressure test.** Every request on this page is small, free and normal: write the mileage down, name the buyer, sign both copies, show identification that matches the title. A seller with nothing to hide finds all of it unremarkable. Resistance to a five-minute, no-cost, entirely standard request is information, and it is the cheapest information you will get all day.

## The checks that belong beside the document

A bill of sale records what you agreed. It cannot tell you whether what you agreed was a good idea. Three checks belong in the same half hour, and all of them run off the VIN you are about to write onto the form.

**Match the VIN in three places.** The dash plate through the windscreen, the sticker in the driver’s door jamb, and the title. All three, character by character, before anything is signed. This is the check that catches the most serious problems, and it takes about ninety seconds.

**Check for a lien.** A car with an outstanding loan against it can be repossessed from you after you have paid for it, and the seller’s assurance that it is cleared is not a lien release. Our guide to [checking for a lien on a car](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/how-to-check-for-a-lien-on-a-car/) covers where the record lives and what a release has to look like.

**Check the mileage against the recorded history.** The number you are about to certify should sit consistently on the sequence of readings reported at previous title transfers and inspections. A dip, a flat stretch, or a jump that does not fit is exactly what the disclosure regime exists to make visible. Our guide to running a [mileage check by VIN](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/mileage-check-by-vin/) explains how that chain is assembled and where its gaps are, and you can pull a [vehicle history report](https://carcheckervin.com) from the VIN while you are still standing next to the car.

Do these before the pen comes out, not after. A discrepancy found before you sign is a negotiation. The same discrepancy found afterwards is a lawsuit, and the two-year window in §32710 runs from when the claim accrues rather than from the day you finally notice.

## Common questions

### Do I actually need a bill of sale to buy a car?

It depends on the state where the vehicle will be titled. Some require one for a private-party registration, some require their own form, and some do not require one at all. Write one regardless. It is the only document in the transaction that records what the two of you agreed, it costs nothing, and the situations where it matters are situations where no substitute exists. Check your own motor vehicle agency’s current requirements before the day rather than relying on any published summary, including this one.

### Does a bill of sale transfer ownership of a car?

No. The title transfers ownership; the bill of sale evidences the transaction that prompted it. In most states you cannot register a vehicle on a bill of sale alone. If a seller offers you a bill of sale and tells you the title is coming, you are being asked to pay for a car and accept a receipt — sometimes for a genuine reason, such as a lienholder still holding the document, and sometimes not. The money should move when the title does.

### Does a bill of sale have to be notarised?

In some states, yes, for a private vehicle sale or for the title assignment itself. Find out before the day, because arranging it afterwards means a second meeting. Notarisation authenticates the signature — that the person who signed is who they said they were and signed willingly, in the notary’s presence. It does not verify the mileage, the VIN, the condition or the seller’s ownership. A notarised document containing a false statement is still a false statement.

### What has to be on the odometer disclosure?

49 CFR Part 580 sets the contents: the odometer reading at transfer without tenths of a mile, the date of transfer, both parties’ printed names and current addresses, and the vehicle’s make, model, year, body type and VIN. The seller signs and certifies the reading as actual, as exceeding the odometer’s mechanical limits, or as not actual with a discrepancy warning. The buyer then signs, prints their name, and makes a copy available to the seller.

### Do I need an odometer disclosure on an older car?

Not always. Vehicles of model year 2010 or earlier are exempt once transferred ten years after the start of the calendar year matching the model year; from model year 2011 onward the exemption arrives only after twenty. Trailers and other vehicles that are not self-propelled are outside the requirement, as are heavy vehicles above the weight rating set in the rule. If the car is genuinely old, the absence of a disclosure is normal. If it is not old enough to be exempt, the absence of one is the problem.

### What can I do if the seller wrote a false mileage?

49 U.S.C. §32710 gives a private person a civil action where the violation was committed with intent to defraud. The damages are three times the actual damages or $10,000, whichever is greater, and the court must award costs and a reasonable attorney’s fee to a claimant who wins. The action has to be brought within two years of the claim accruing. The intent requirement is real: an honest error is not this claim. The floor was $1,500 until 2012, which is why older advice about rollback claims not being worth bringing is out of date.

### Can I just download a bill of sale template?

You can, and most of them are adequate, but check two things before you use one. Does your state publish its own form? If so, use that instead — it asks for the fields that agency wants and removes any argument at the counter. And does the template leave the odometer certification to the title, or duplicate it? If it duplicates it, the two documents must say exactly the same thing. A template that prompts you to write a mileage figure that differs from the federal disclosure has created the discrepancy it was supposed to prevent.

## Sources and further reading

- [49 CFR Part 580 (odometer disclosure requirements)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/part-580)
- [49 U.S.C. §32710 (odometer fraud: civil actions by private persons)](https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2023-title49/USCODE-2023-title49-subtitleVI-partC-chap327-sec32710)
- [NHTSA odometer fraud](https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/odometer-fraud)
- [FTC used car buying guide](https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/buying-used-car-dealer)
- [FTC Used Car Rule](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/dealers-guide-used-car-rule)
- [16 CFR Part 455 (Used Car Rule)](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-455)
- [NMVTIS (US Department of Justice)](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/)
- [UCC § 2-314 (Implied warranty: merchantability)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/2/2-314)

Recall, complaint and safety-rating figures on this page were retrieved from the federal databases above on August 19, 2026. Federal data changes — re-check any VIN before you rely on it.

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