Kansas runs its paperwork through the county treasurer, and it runs on the certificate itself: assign the title completely - a sale without it is fraudulent and void under K.S.A. 8-135 - take your plate off, and decide whether ten dollars for the online seller's notification is worth ending your connection to the car on the day. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Kansas Department of Revenue, Division of Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Kansas titleWhat Kansas law and the Division's own instructions put on the certificate, drawn as a labelled diagram - the state publishes no picture of its title.Open the walkthrough →Kansas puts the odometer certification inside the title assignment rather than on a separate sheet: K.S.A. 8-135(c)(2)(A) has the seller insert and certify the mileage, and makes the buyer's signature on the same form their acknowledgement of it. The trap is signing for someone else - the Division prints on its own TR-41 that federal and state law prohibits a person from signing for both buyer and seller and disclosing mileage in the same transaction, which is why an ordinary downloadable power of attorney cannot finish a disclosure-age sale by itself.
The Division states the age test on TR-41 in one sentence: vehicles 2010 model year or older are exempt at 10 years, vehicles 2011 model year and newer are exempt at 20 years. TR-40 repeats the second half - model year 2011 and newer require disclosure for 20 years - so a 2011 stays in disclosure until 2031. The TR-212a application gives the county four mileage boxes to key from your assignment: Actual, Exceeds, Not Actual, Exempt.
Model year 2010 or older: Exempt once ten years old - which every one of them now is. No reading is required at transfer.
Model year 2011 or newer: Disclosure required until the vehicle is twenty years old, in whole miles.
The reading has rolled over: Tick the mechanical-limits statement. TR-59 and the electronic-title disclosure on TR-40 both print it: the odometer reading reflects the mileage in excess of mechanical limits.
The reading is wrong and you know it: Tick the not-actual statement and the words the Division prints beside it follow the car: Warning, odometer discrepancy.
Kansas Division of Vehicles, TR-41 Power of Attorney, odometer note
You, the seller: Complete the whole assignment on the back of the certificate before anyone signs - the Division's instruction is that the seller must complete all information on the assignment of title except for the buyer's printed name and signature. That means purchase price, date of sale, odometer reading, and your own printed name and signature. No notary watches any of it.
The buyer: Prints their name and signs the assignment - the one part the Division leaves to them - then takes the assigned title, proof of insurance and the sales tax to the county treasurer's motor vehicle office in the county where the car will be garaged, within 60 days.
How many owners must sign depends on one printed word. The Division's rule for a title carrying two names turns entirely on the connector between them. And - all persons listed must sign. Or - either person can sign, only one signature required. If no connection is listed, it will default to and, and all parties must sign. Check the face of your certificate before arranging a sale day, because a co-owner on the wrong side of the state is a solvable problem only if you notice it in advance.
The fix for an absent co-owner is a power of attorney - TR-41 for a paper title, TR-40 for an electronic one - signed before the sale, in original ink, because the Division will not accept a faxed or photocopied power of attorney.
The Division answers this in its own FAQ, in words worth quoting whole: the Kansas Division of Vehicles does not require most title assignments, title applications and bills of sale completed within Kansas to be notarized, reserving the right only for unusual circumstances. You and the buyer sign the back of the certificate wherever you happen to be standing.
Kansas Department of Revenue, Division of Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
An assignment you complete entirely except two lines, a bill of sale that has become a tax document, and a ten-dollar online filing that ends your liability the day you make it.
Kansas holds every liened title electronically, so this is the situation where you sell a car whose title does not exist on paper yet - a sales agreement, a sworn release, and sometimes a power of attorney for the day the paper arrives.
One application replaces a lost, mutilated or illegible certificate for ten dollars - unless a lien is on the record, in which case no duplicate exists to be had until the release is in.
One downloadable power of attorney in original ink, and the reason it cannot sign the odometer line of a newer car's sale by itself.
Kansas gives an estate three doors that skip probate: a beneficiary printed on the title itself, a spouse or heir waiting on a will, and a sworn small-estates affidavit for everything under the statute's ceiling.
One affidavit turns a wrecked, burned or uninsured car into a salvage or nonhighway title - and one box on it can never be unticked.
The plate comes off and stays yours: move it to the next car for $1.50, cash out the unused registration and property tax at the treasurer's counter, and claim the new 120-day sales tax offset if you are replacing the car.
K.S.A. 8-135(a) ends the registration at the moment of transfer: the registration of the vehicle and the right to use any license plate thereon shall expire, the license plate shall be removed by the owner, and it is unlawful for any person other than the person to whom the plate was originally issued to have possession of it. The Division's FAQ says the same in plainer words - the previous owner must remove their license plate from the vehicle or trailer once the title is assigned and the vehicle or trailer is delivered.
Kansas then gives you three doors. Re-register another vehicle under the same number for a $1.50 transfer fee, paying only the difference if the new vehicle's fee is higher. Display the old plate on a vehicle you have just acquired for up to 60 days while the transfer is pending - the statute allows it for a motorcycle or passenger vehicle, carrying the paperwork in the cab. Or take the plate and your registration receipt to the county treasurer and apply for a refund of the remaining registration and property tax, issued from the date the plate reaches the county office.
What you cannot do is leave the plate on for the buyer. Their lawful ways home are a $3 sixty-day temporary permit from the county treasurer's counter or a dealer, or a current plate of their own from a vehicle they have disposed of, displayed for up to 60 days pending transfer. Driving your plate is possession of a plate issued to someone else, which 8-135(a) makes unlawful in as many words.
The refund needs your Social Security or federal employer identification number, and the clock favours speed: the refund runs from the date the license plate is received at the county office, not from the date of sale.
Kansas gives the seller a filing of their own, and makes it optional. Under K.S.A. 8-135(c)(12), the owner of any vehicle assigning a certificate of title may file with the division a form indicating that such owner has assigned such certificate of title, for a fee of $10. The Division's name for it is the Seller's Notification of Sale, form TR-216 - and there is nothing to print, because the filing lives online: the FAQ's own link for the form goes to the iKan portal at pay.payitgov.com, which asks for the VIN, year, make, model, date of sale, both parties' names and addresses, and a sworn certification that the assigned title was delivered to the buyer on that date.
What the ten dollars buys is written in the statute. The filing is prima facie evidence that the certificate of title was assigned and creates a rebuttable presumption of the assignment - and if the buyer never applies for registration, an owner who filed shall not be held liable for damages resulting from the operation of the vehicle. That last clause is the whole point: without it, the record shows you as the last owner until the buyer gets around to the treasurer's office, and Kansas gives them 60 days.
There is no deadline, which is a reason to do it immediately.
Unlike the states that fine a seller for a late notice, Kansas attaches no clock to the TR-216 - the statute says may, not shall. The protection it grants starts when you file, so the sensible reading is to file it the evening the car leaves, along with a photograph of the completed assignment showing the buyer's printed name, the price, the date and the mileage. Keep the iKan receipt with the photo: the certification you make on the filing - that the title was assigned and delivered to the buyer on the date shown - is itself made under threat of criminal prosecution for false certification, so file it only once the title has actually changed hands. Kansas Department of Revenue, Seller's Notice of Sale on iKan.
K.S.A. 8-135(a), expiry and removal of the plate on transfer
Register at the county treasurer's motor vehicle office within 60 days of the purchase. Sales tax on a private sale is the buyer's, and no one collects it at the kitchen table: on an isolated or occasional sale the purchaser pays the tax to the county treasurer when registering, in the county where they live, on the actual selling price you both wrote on the assignment. Since 1 January 2025, a buyer who sold their own car within 120 days either side of the purchase pays tax only on the difference in price - which is why Kansas now wants a signed TR-312 bill of sale from both transactions. The title fee is $10. Registration, property tax and the county's own fees land at the same counter, which is why the Division's answer to what will it cost is to ask your county treasurer. A 60-day temporary permit is $3 if the buyer has no plate to transfer.
What they need to bring:
Kansas is one of the states with no inspection programme at all for an ordinary sale: the Division's FAQ says flatly that Kansas does not have a safety or emissions inspection requirement or program. The one examination that exists is the Kansas Highway Patrol's MVE-1 VIN check, and it belongs to the buyer's side of specific situations - a vehicle titled in another state or country, an out-of-state bill-of-sale purchase, a 1950-or-newer antique sold on a bill of sale, or a formerly nonhighway or salvage vehicle coming back to the road. Selling a Kansas-titled car to a Kansas buyer, nobody inspects anything.
Kansas Department of Revenue, Division of Vehicles.
Kansas Department of Revenue, Division of Vehicles · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Kansas and the rest of the guides.