Nobody in Arkansas will ask you to find a notary, and nobody will inspect the car: the whole of an ordinary sale is the assignment on the back of the title, a bill of sale that doubles as the odometer statement, and a screwdriver for the plate, which is yours to keep. The one thing worth planning around is the sixty-day tax credit - time the sale right and the tax on your next car is charged on the difference. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Office of Motor Vehicle's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out an Arkansas titleWhat the assignment on the back asks for, drawn from DFA's own instruction and the forms that reproduce it.Open the walkthrough →Form 10-313 puts one sentence in the seller's mouth: the odometer now reads this many miles and it reflects the actual miles, UNLESS a box is checked. Box 2 is printed with its warning attached - WARNING - ODOMETER DISCREPANCY - and ticking it certifies the reading is not the real mileage. That is not a modest hedge for a seller who is not quite sure; it is a declaration that follows the vehicle. Read the dashboard twice, write whole miles with no tenths, and make the figure agree with the disclosure on the title assignment, because a Revenue Office examiner comparing two documents about one sale notices when they differ.
Whether a disclosure is needed at all turns on the model year, under the federal rule at 49 CFR 580.17. A 2011-or-newer vehicle discloses until it is twenty model years old; a 2010-or-older vehicle is exempt outright. Arkansas builds the wording into its own paperwork twice - on the 10-313 and in the title assignment - and TIMA Form #2 exists for the one case where somebody else signs the disclosure for you, warning on its face that federal law (49 U.S.C. § 32705) and Arkansas law (Ark. Code Ann. § 4-90-206) require the transferor to state the mileage on transfer.
Model year 2011 or newer: The reading goes in, in whole miles - the 10-313 prints (no tenths) into the sentence - and stays required until twenty years after 1 January of the model year.
Model year 2010 or older: Exempt under 49 CFR 580.17(a)(3). No disclosure is required, though the 10-313's price and signature sections still do their work on any sale.
A 2011-or-newer vehicle over twenty years old: Falls out of disclosure twenty years after 1 January of its model year under 580.17(a)(4), which starts mattering in 2031.
Over 16,000 pounds gross weight, or not self-propelled: Exempt by what the vehicle is, under 580.17(a)(1) and (2) - the exemption a seller of an ordinary car never meets.
You, the seller: Your job is the assignment section on the back of the certificate: DFA's own instruction is that the seller must print the buyer's name in the assignment section, and then seller and buyer both sign and print their names in the appropriate sections. Fill in the mileage disclosure where the assignment carries it, write a bill of sale - the 10-313 covers the price and the odometer in one sheet - and hand both over with the keys. No notary, no witness, no counter visit for you.
The buyer: Takes the signed title and bill of sale to any State Revenue Office within sixty calendar days, with proof of insurance, this year's property assessment and proof of personal property taxes paid, and pays the sales tax, the $10.00 title fee and the registration for the vehicle's weight. The plate on the car went home with you, so they bring their own or leave with a new one.
AND or OR. Where a title names two owners joined by AND, both must sign; joined by OR, either signature carries it alone. DFA prints the rule for the title application - the signatures of all owners are required when joint ownership is connected by AND on the ownership documents - and applies the same test to replacement titles and beneficiary requests, warning that failure to have all signatures will result in rejection of the application.
The rule reaches paperwork you might not expect: on a replacement title, and-joined owners both sign the application, and on the beneficiary request all owners sign regardless of how many there are.
There is no electronic-title program standing between an Arkansas seller and the document: the certificate is paper, the assignment is on its back, and if yours is lost the replacement is a $10.00 application any State Revenue Office can take - with one accommodation the FAQ spells out for people mid-sale: apply in person at the Central Revenue Office in Little Rock, pay $10 more, and the expedited title is ready for pick up in 3 business days instead of the minimum three weeks a mailed replacement takes.
Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Office of Motor Vehicle, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One sheet carries the bill of sale and the odometer statement together, the tax credit gives the sale a deadline worth planning, and the notice of transfer is the free filing that dates your exit.
A paid-off loan that was never released in DFA's system stops a sale years later - and the release is the lender's one-page form, not yours.
A lost certificate, a botched assignment, a title stuck in the state's own suspense file, or no title at all: Arkansas publishes a different sheet for each, and one of them is the only notarised form a seller meets.
Arkansas publishes a general power of attorney for vehicle transactions and a federal-pattern one for the odometer disclosure alone, and they are not interchangeable.
One affidavit moves a vehicle through an unadministered estate, and one request printed on the title years earlier makes the affidavit unnecessary.
Flood and wreck paperwork runs from the owner's own declaration of damage through the rebuilder's affidavit to the window sticker Arkansas requires before a branded car can even be offered for sale.
On a transfer the registration expires and the seller removes the plate - that is A.C.A. § 27-14-902's arrangement, and DFA's fee schedule prices the other half of it: Tag transfer fee to another vehicle, $1.00. The schedule even works an example of a tag moving between vehicles, adding the $8.00 difference when the next car sits in a heavier weight class and giving nothing back when it sits in a lighter one.
There is no surrender and no form for keeping what is yours. Take the plate off at the handover and carry it to the Revenue Office when you register the replacement vehicle: one dollar transfers it, plus the weight-class difference if the new vehicle registers dearer. The one printed exception is heavy trucks - the class 2-8 schedule sells a separate $1.00 transaction for sending both tag and truck to new owner, and marks it (applies to class 2 - 8 trucks only).
A plate left on the car keeps your name bolted to it until the buyer registers, and the buyer has no need of it: the FAQ's arrangement is a temporary tag from any State Revenue Office, issued on the bill of sale and a driver's license within the first 10 days after purchase.
Buyers moving their own plate across is the normal Arkansas pattern - DFA's online registration service describes itself as letting you register your vehicle, apply for a title, transfer your license plate, and pay sales tax online in as little as 15 minutes.
Arkansas puts no clock on a seller. What it offers instead is the Notice of Transfer of Ownership of a Motor Vehicle, one page that quotes its own statute: under Ark. Code Ann. § 27-14-911, an owner who has made a bona fide sale, delivered possession, and properly endorsed and delivered the certificate of title is not liable for damages from the vehicle's later negligent operation - and at his option may tell the Office of Motor Vehicle so, in person at the Ragland Building or by mail to the Records Unit. DFA also runs the same notification online under the name Transfer Vehicle Ownership.
The statute protects a seller who did everything right whether or not the notice is filed - the filing is how you prove the date. Vehicle, buyer, seller, date of transfer, one certification that the title was properly endorsed and delivered, one signature. No fee is printed anywhere on it. Five minutes, and the state's records say the car left your hands on the day it actually did.
Keep the insurance until the plate is off and the notice is in.
The 27-14-911 protection quoted on the notice turns on three things having happened: bona fide sale, possession delivered, title properly endorsed and delivered. Until all three are true - a buyer still owing money, a title you have promised to post on - the vehicle is still yours in every way that hurts, and the plate on its bumper is registered to you. Hand everything over at once, take the plate the same minute, and only then let the policy lapse DFA, Transfer Vehicle Ownership service.
Register at any State Revenue Office within 60 calendar days of the transfer - after that the FAQ prices it: a 10% penalty on the sales tax due, plus $3.00 for each 10 days the vehicle goes unregistered. Sales tax is the buyer's, paid at registration, and the state rate steps with the price of a used vehicle: nothing at all under $4,000, a reduced 3.5% from $4,000 through $9,999, and the full 6.5% at $10,000 or more - Act 1013's bands, applied by the date of sale rather than the date of registration. City and county tax is not subject to the reduced state rate, but motor vehicles licensed for highway use keep the old local single-transaction cap, so local tax touches at most the first $2,500 of the price. On top of the tax: the $10.00 title fee, registration at $17.00, $25.00 or $30.00 by the car's weight ($21.00 for half-ton and three-quarter-ton pickups), a $2.50 validation decal, and 50 cents lien filing if a lender is going on the title.
What they need to bring:
Nothing in what DFA publishes about transferring a vehicle asks anyone to test, smog or inspect it. The FAQ's list of what a buyer needs - title, bill of sale, lien contract, odometer statement, assessment, property taxes, insurance - contains no inspection line; the registration checklist on DFA's own what-you-need page adds none; and the fee schedules price no inspection at all. The one VIN verification in the seller's paperwork belongs to the bonded-title route, where a vehicle with no title needs its identity confirmed on a form prescribed by the Arkansas State Police by a certified law enforcement officer before the state will consider bonding it. A car that runs badly, or not at all, is still a car you can sign over.
Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, Office of Motor Vehicle · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Arkansas and the rest of the guides.