Signing a Georgia title takes about ninety seconds once you know which boxes matter. Getting one of them wrong sends the buyer back to a county tag office in the county where the buyer lives and the car back to your driveway. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Georgia titleThe reverse of the certificate, block by block, on the Department's own picture of a blank one - and the two clocks that start the moment you date it.Open the walkthrough →The back of a Georgia title gives you an odometer space and two tick blocks, and neither block says Exempt. There is nowhere to tick for an exempt vehicle, because the Department wants the word itself: on a car old enough to qualify you write exempt into the space where the mileage would go.
The Department's instruction is one number for every vehicle - twenty model years old or older and the reading need not be disclosed - and its own bill of sale prints the same rule twice. The federal regulation the Department cites runs on two tracks instead, and for a car built between 2007 and 2010 the two do not land in the same place. Writing the true reading satisfies both, and it is the only answer that is right whichever rule a clerk applies.
Model year 2006 or older: Twenty model years old in 2026, so the Department treats it as exempt. Write the word exempt into the odometer space rather than looking for a box to tick, because there is not one.
Model year 2007 to 2010: The gap. Georgia's published rule still counts twenty years, while the federal regulation exempts anything built in or before 2010 once it is ten model years old. Write the mileage.
Model year 2011 or newer: Not exempt under either rule, and nowhere near it - the federal regulation's own worked example puts model year 2011 at 2031. Whole miles, no tenths.
Over 16,000 lb gross vehicle weight, or not self-propelled: Exempt on both counts, and the Department lists trailers as the everyday case.
Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Print your name and sign it under Transferor on the back of the title, in blue or black ink. If two people are named as owners, both print and both sign. Georgia asks for nothing else from you on the certificate - no notary, no witness, no separate odometer form.
The buyer: The buyer prints and signs under Transferee, acknowledging the mileage you declared, and then has to get to a county tag office with the title, a Form MV-1, proof of insurance and the tax.
The one line on the certificate that carries a criminal penalty. Filling in the buyer's name is not tidiness, it is the law. The Department quotes Georgia Code 40-3-91(c) on three separate pages: anyone who delivers or accepts a certificate of title assigned in blank is guilty of a misdemeanor and may be fined not more than $100.00 or imprisoned for up to 30 days, for each certificate.
The certificate prints the same warning across its own top edge in red, before you reach a single box. A buyer who asks you to leave the name blank so they can flip the car is asking you to commit an offence and to leave the vehicle attached to you while they do it.
The red banner on the reverse ends with four words that decide how you fill it in: any alteration voids this title. There is no correction fluid, no crossing out and no writing over. The Department's own instruction page repeats it and adds a price: any alteration or erasure may void the title, and an altered purchase date may cost a $10 penalty fee.
Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
A signed assignment on the back of the certificate, an MV-1 the buyer files at their county tag office, and a registration cancellation you file the same day.
Georgia releases a lien on the face of the certificate, and keeps three separate forms for the cases where that is not possible.
A title that never arrived, a title with the wrong thing printed on it, an assignment spoiled by a strikeover, and the surety bond route for a car with no title at all.
Signing through an attorney-in-fact, and signing for a company - both notarised, and one of them expires after twelve months.
No probate, no administration, an estate with no debts, and one affidavit the heirs have agreed on.
Salvage titles, the rebuilt inspection that turns one back into a road car, and the affidavit for a mileage figure that came out wrong.
The Georgia tag stays with you, so the surrender form is for the cases where it has nowhere left to go.
The Department is blunt about it on the page written for sellers: keep the vehicle's licence plates and tags, because these do not transfer with the vehicle to the new owner. Take the plate off before the car leaves.
Then read the second half of the rule, which catches people out. Moving your own plate to a car you have just bought is allowed, but only after the plate has been properly transferred at a county tag office - and the Department states plainly that it is illegal to remove or transfer a licence plate from the vehicle it was issued for. Bolting yesterday's plate onto today's purchase in the driveway is the version that gets a ticket.
If the plate has no future - the car was your last one, or the tag is a specialty design you are done with - it can be handed in. That is what Form T-158 does, and its own list of surrender reasons is worth reading before you fill it in: court order, repossession, salvage, abandoned or derelict. An ordinary sale is not on the list, which tells you what Georgia expects an ordinary seller to do with a plate.
One thing the form says in its section A that nothing else says anywhere: do not surrender special or prestige licence plates. Those go back to the tag office a different way.
Georgia has no release of liability, no notice of transfer and no mailer to send in. What it has instead is a cancellation: the Department's instruction to a seller is to transfer ownership AND cancel the registration, either online through DRIVES e-Services or in person on Form MV-18J at the tag office in the county where you live.
Cancelling is what stops the vehicle record generating bills in your name. Until it happens the car is still a registered Georgia vehicle with your name on the registration, and Georgia's insurance database is watching it - which is why the Department tells you to cancel the registration before you cancel the cover, and not the other way round.
Ten consecutive days is all it takes, and the fine arrives by post.
A lapse is defined as 10 or more consecutive days with no liability insurance coverage on record with the Department. Drop the policy on a car whose registration you have not cancelled and the clock starts on day one; the letter that follows carries a $25.00 fine for failure to maintain continuous liability insurance coverage, and ignoring it leads to the registration being suspended and a further $60 reinstatement fine. Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, registration cancellation.
Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, private party registration
Register at a county tag office in the county where the buyer lives within 7 days of the purchase. There is no sales tax on the transfer at all. Georgia charges Title Ad Valorem Tax instead, at 7.0% of fair market value, once, at titling - and the Department is explicit that TAVT replaced sales tax and annual ad valorem tax and is paid every time ownership is transferred. The fee side is small and fixed: $18 for the title and $20 for the licence plate registration.
What they need to bring:
Georgia runs no safety inspection anywhere, and its emissions programme covers metro Atlanta only. It is a registration requirement, which means it is the buyer's job at the tag office and not a condition of the sale - the Department lists an emission inspection certificate among the documents the buyer brings, if applicable. Nothing stops you assigning the title to someone whose county tests.
The county that matters is the buyer's county of registration, not the county the car is standing in when you sell it. Georgia's Clean Air Force, the programme the Department of Revenue links for emissions.
Georgia Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Georgia and the rest of the guides.