New Policy Effective This Coming March 1st Will Require A Bill Of Sale When Transferring Motor Vehicle Titles Between Private Parties

(Spirit Lake)– A new policy going into effect this coming March 1^st will require a bill of sale from customers when transferring titles of motor vehicles between private parties. Dickinson County Treasurer Kris Rowley tells KUOO news it’s an extension of a policy that is already required for vehicles purchased from a dealership…Bill of Sale01 

“So if you’re coming in to title something, you’ll need to provide us proof of where the car came from or whatever vehicle, whatever kind it was, and who sold it, who you are that bought it, those kinds of things, what was the date of the sale and what was the purchase price. And signatures for buyer and seller. So that’s what we’re after. We just want to ensure that the transfers are done with all of the information we can possibly get, and that purchase price is really important, too, because that helps fund our Road Use Tax Funds and things like that to keep our roads good. And so many things are based on the purchase price, so we need verification of that. Dickinson county is not the only county doing this. Just about I believe all the 99 counties will be adding bill of sale requirements in this next year.”

Rowley says a template of a bill of sale can be obtained from the Treasurer’s Office website or by stopping at the office. She says handwritten documents will also be accepted, but they must contain the required information…Bill of Sale02 

“One of them is the VIN number so we have the correct vehicle that we’re transferring; and another is the address of the buyer, the address of the seller, and signatures on those. Also the make of the vehicle, the model, the year and date of sale. All those things are important. If you don’t have a bill of sale, sometimes it’s hard because you might have bought something on Craig’s List or whatever, then we’d like to see what the agreement was. You probably have an e-mail or a text or you might have a cancelled check. Something that can help us prove that, because we want to make sure we get the price right.”

Rowley says Dickinson county sees a relatively high volume of car and trailer sales…Bill of Sale03 

“We’re busy with many of these transfers and we’ve seen a lot of them already yet this year in January. And so it will affect people. The dealer, any cars or vehicles that are bought through dealers already have this in place, we do get the bill of sale from the dealers directly or the purchase agreement, and so it’s just going to affect the private sales.”

Rowley adds that making a false statement of the purchase price is a fraudulent practice and that anyone doing so can be assessed a penalty of 75 percent of the amount of the one-time registration fee that wasn’t paid. That fee, previously known as Use Tax, is five percent of the sales or lease price of the vehicle.