The tax return on a private sale. It belongs to a different agency from everything else here - the Illinois Department of Revenue - and it is the buyer's return, not yours. It is also the second document in an Illinois transfer that cannot be downloaded, for a reason the Department states plainly: every copy carries its own transaction number.
Written against RUT-50 (Serial-numbered, not published online), issued under 35 ILCS 105, Illinois Department of Revenue. You are the seller. Nothing on this return is yours to complete except Step 2, and nothing on it is yours to pay. It is here because a buyer will ask you about it at the kerb, and because a sale that stalls over the tax stalls your transfer as well.
There is no download link for the RUT-50 here because there is not one anywhere - the Secretary of State does not publish it. The card below explains where it does come from.
There is no completed sample of the RUT-50 on this page because the Illinois Department of Revenue does not publish the form, only its instructions. Its own words are that these forms have unique transaction numbers that should not be duplicated, so each copy is issued individually at a Secretary of State facility, a currency exchange, or by post from the Department's forms line - and a page that showed you a filled-in one would be showing you a document nobody is allowed to reproduce. The step-by-step below is taken from the published instructions and the 2026 tax chart instead.
| On the form | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Step 1, purchaser's information | Name, phone, driver's licence number, Social Security or Federal Employer Identification Number, and the address exactly as it appears on the Illinois title or registration application. A post office box is refused - the Department asks for the actual physical address of the party who will be using the item in Illinois. |
| Step 2, seller's information | Your name, phone number and address. That is the whole of your part in it. |
| Step 3, describe the vehicle | Purchase price, odometer reading, vehicle identification number, year, make and model. |
| Step 4, transaction description | Exemption codes 1a to 1d for a tax due of nothing; exception codes 2a to 2c at a flat $15; a motorcycle or ATV line at a flat $25. |
| Step 5, which table applies | Table A if the purchase price or fair market value is under $15,000 - the tax is read off the model year. Table B if it is $15,000 or more - the tax is read off the price. |
| Step 6, the amount | Line 1 is the state tax from the chart; lines 2 and 3 are local government private party vehicle use tax where a municipality or county imposes it. |
Every line here was read off RUT-50 (Serial-numbered, not published online) itself — the PDF is here — and off the Illinois Secretary of State pages. This is plain-language help with a form, not legal advice, and where our wording and the agency's differ, theirs governs.
Back to all Illinois seller paperwork, or what selling a car in Illinois involves.