The Division of Taxation's return for a vehicle bought from anyone who is not a Rhode Island dealer, and the reason a private seller's name reaches the tax authorities at all. The buyer files it and pays the tax, but the form has a NAME OF SELLER box and an address beneath it, and the figure it is worked on comes off your bill of sale.
Written against T-334 (11/2013), issued under RI Division of Taxation, Excise Tax Section. The age of the car decides which figure Rhode Island taxes, and the bands do not run the way people expect. Seven years old or less, the buyer pays on book value or the price, whichever is higher. Eight to twenty-nine, the price - unless the car is on the Division of Taxation's Cars of Particular Interest list, when book value comes back. Thirty and older, book value or price, whichever is higher, again.
Two documents, and they are not the same thing. Take the blank T-334 from the dmv.ri.gov copy so you get the revision that is current today.
There is nothing to fill in on the copy the Division of Taxation publishes. The T-334 is a scan of a printed 1099-by-482-pixel form with no text layer and no fillable fields at all, so an annotated sample of it would be handwriting over a photograph rather than values placed in the form's own boxes - which is not something this site does. The blocks are listed below in the order they appear on the sheet, and the one that concerns a seller is the second column: NAME OF SELLER, with an address underneath it.
| On the form | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Registration number | A box across the head of the return, completed where the vehicle is being registered at the same time. |
| Name of purchaser/registrant, and address | The left-hand column: who is paying the tax, their street, city and state, and a social security or federal identification number. |
| Name of seller, and address | The middle column, with city or town and state beside it. On a private sale this is you. |
| Vehicle identification number - purchased vehicle | With year, model and make of the vehicle beside it. |
| Vehicle identification number - trade-in | A second row, with its own year, model and make, used only where a private passenger auto was traded in to the seller for another private passenger auto. |
| The calculation column | Date of purchase, gross sales price, deduction, taxable sales price, amount of tax, less credit for sales tax paid in another jurisdiction, and tax due - with a shaded trade-in and rebate block that the office totals. |
| Declaration and signature | A declaration under penalty of perjury that the certificate has been examined and is true and correct, signed and dated by the purchaser or registrant. |
Every line here was read off T-334 (11/2013) itself — the PDF is here — and off the Rhode Island Division 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 Rhode Island seller paperwork, or what selling a car in Rhode Island involves.