The tax form for a private sale, and the one people wrongly assume is the buyer's alone. It is issued by the Department of Taxation and Finance rather than the DMV, it is handed in at a motor vehicle office, and its page two carries a seller's affidavit that a gift or a bargain price cannot be registered without.
Written against DTF-802 (5/15), issued under New York Tax Law section 1817(b) and Penal Law section 210.45. A seller who signs Section 6 is signing a tax affidavit, not a receipt. The certification underneath is the same one the buyer signs, and it names the criminal statute above the fine.
Two documents, and they are not the same thing. Take the blank DTF-802 from the dmv.ny.gov copy so you get the revision that is current today.
This one cannot be shown filled in the way the rest of this set is. Every other form here is rendered from the agency's own fillable PDF, with each value placed inside the rectangle that form's own AcroForm defines - which is what makes the samples provably accurate rather than eyeballed. The copy of the DTF-802 published at dmv.ny.gov is a flat document with no form fields in it at all, so there are no rectangles to place anything in, and drawing values on top of it by hand is exactly the practice that produces sample images with a number sitting in the wrong box. The field-by-field notes above are transcribed from the form's own text instead.
| On the form | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Section 1, vehicle information | Type of vehicle, then year, make, model and the vehicle or hull identification number. Boat and boat/trailer combinations get a second row for the trailer. |
| Section 2, new owner information | Name or business name, and the new owner's social security number, taxpayer identification number or employer identification number - the instructions say it is required. |
| Section 3, previous owner information | You. Name, number and street address, city, state, ZIP and county. |
| Section 4, transaction information | Date of transaction, and the relationship of the new owner to the previous owner: none, spouse, parent, child, stepparent, stepchild, or other. Then one box of six describing what the transaction actually is. |
| Section 5, purchase information | Cash payment, balance of payments assumed, and the value of property given, traded or swapped or services performed instead of cash - totalled as the purchase price on line 1d. Then the tax rate as a decimal, and the tax due. |
| The tax rate note | The form does not print a rate. It says to use the tax rate of the new owner's place of residence, and where the purchaser is resident in two or more counties, the rate where the vehicle will principally be used or garaged. |
| Purchaser certification | Signed under a warning that willfully issuing a false or fraudulent statement with intent to evade tax is a misdemeanour, punishable by a fine up to $10,000 for an individual and $20,000 for a corporation. |
| Section 6, affidavit of sale or gift | The seller's half. Cash payment received, then whether the purchaser performed any service, assumed any debt or traded any property in addition to or instead of cash, with a value against each - totalled as the total selling price on line 7d. |
Every line here was read off DTF-802 (5/15) itself — the PDF is here — and off the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles 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 New York seller paperwork, or what selling a car in New York involves.