Six things end a South Dakota sale, and four of them are Class 2 misdemeanors if you skip them. Sign the assignment on the back of the certificate and get it to the buyer inside forty-five days. Complete the odometer disclosure inside that assignment. Take your plates off the car. Hand the buyer a free forty-five-day seller's permit so they can drive it home. File a report of sale at the time of sale. Give them a bill of sale, which is the one item on the list that carries no penalty and still costs your buyer real money if it is missing. Nothing on that list is notarised. Here is the whole thing, taken from the South Dakota Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a South Dakota titleThe assignment blank on the reverse of the certificate, the tear-off strip at its foot, and the five signatures that decide who owns the car.Open the walkthrough →Two places on the department's own site still teach the rule that expired at the end of 2020. Its article on replacing a lost title asks whether the vehicle is "less than 10 years old". The odometer chapter of the Procedures Manual it hands county treasurers lists among the exemptions "a vehicle that is ten (10) or more years old [current year (-) 10]" - eighty pages after the same manual's own table prints the corrected version. Ask at a counter and you may be told a 2013 car needs nothing. It does.
What the department published when the rule changed: from 1 January 2021, disclosure is required on every transfer of ownership for the first twenty years, beginning with model year 2011 vehicles. Model year 2010 and older stays on the old ten-year test and is therefore exempt outright. A 2011 model has to keep disclosing until 2031. The disclosure belongs inside the assignment on the back of the title; Form 1021 is the separate sheet for the cases where the title cannot carry it.
Model year 2011 or newer, under twenty years old: The reading goes into the odometer statement in the assignment, in whole miles, with one of the three printed statements: actual mileage, exceeds the odometer's mechanical limits, or not actual - warning, odometer discrepancy.
Model year 2010 or older: Exempt. The department will still process a title application that carries a reading, and it becomes part of the vehicle's history - but where an earlier owner skipped the disclosure, the manual is blunt about the consequence: once there is a skip, the odometer cannot be shown on the title again.
Over 16,000 pounds, or a trailer, snowmobile or boat: Exempt whatever the year. Motorcycles are not - the department wrote out to say that a South Dakota motorcycle title previously issued showing no odometer reading now has to comply, and the reading will be shown on the title.
South Dakota Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Turn the certificate over. The assignment blank is on the reverse, and the department's manual says so in one line: transfer of ownership must be made by an assignment on the reverse side of the certificate of title. Sign it using the exact name shown on the face - the manual repeats that instruction word for word in its name-change chapter - print the buyer's name and complete address, record the date of sale, and complete the odometer statement in the same block. Nothing here is sworn, witnessed or notarised.
The buyer: The buyer takes the assigned certificate to the county treasurer in the county where they live, inside forty-five days, with a title application, your bill of sale, and payment of the 4% motor vehicle excise tax, a $10 title fee and a $2 technology fee. Their registration and plates are bought at the same counter.
AND or OR. One word between two owner names decides how many signatures the assignment needs, and the manual spells out all three cases. John Doe or Mary Doe may be assigned by either. John Doe and Mary Doe must be assigned by both. John Doe and Mary Doe, with rights of survivorship must also be assigned by both, except on the death of one, when the survivor may assign it alone with a certified copy of the death certificate attached to the certificate.
And if there is no word at all between the names, do not read that as permission. The manual's rule for a blank connector is that it will be interpreted as "and", requiring the signatures of all owners. No South Dakota title is ever issued reading "and/or"; where an old document shows it, the department construes it as "or".
The Motor Vehicle Division tells its own staff to refuse work it cannot read: the division will not accept an incomplete application form or an application form that the Division considers inaccurate or appears to be altered. The certificate is held to the same standard, and the state publishes no form for repairing one. Where the assignment has been spoiled, the route back is a Duplicate Title Application - $10, plus the $2 technology fee - and only the recorded owner can file it.
South Dakota Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
The five documents that surround an ordinary South Dakota sale: the report of sale that has no grace period, the bill of sale that decides what your buyer is taxed on, the odometer sheet, the buyer's application, and the exemption a tribal member applies for.
No paper title is printed while a lien is noted, so a seller still on a loan has nothing to sign. These three forms are how a certificate comes back into existence.
Lost, spoiled, or never issued at all. South Dakota publishes no correction affidavit, so a $10 duplicate is the cure for most of it - and a vehicle over thirty years old with no record on file has its own two-form route.
One page, notarised, and it is the only thing that lets somebody else sign the assignment for you.
No probate, an estate under $100,000, and thirty days elapsed: one notarised affidavit moves the car, either to an heir or straight to a buyer.
Hail, water and total losses. One statement discloses the damage, the other is the affidavit that gets a rebuilt car inspected and back on the road.
The plates came off the car and the registration is still yours. This is the form for the money you are owed back.
SDCL 32-5-2.7 puts the duty on you by name: if the ownership of a vehicle is transferred or assigned, the transferor shall remove the number plates from the vehicle. The unexpired months are not lost - you receive credit for them at the time the plates are attached to another vehicle - but the same section closes both escape routes. No refund may be issued if the plate is detached and not reattached, and if the transferor fails to remove the number plates, the transferor loses any credit and the plates are no longer valid. Failing to remove them is a Class 2 misdemeanor.
So a South Dakota plate is money only if you buy another car. Take the plates off, register your next vehicle at the county treasurer's counter, and the remaining months come off that bill with a $5 reassignment fee added. Let them sit in the garage until the registration month passes and the credit evaporates - an unattached plate that expires is no longer valid and cannot be used. Plates only move between like vehicles, so a motorcycle plate will not go onto a car.
There are four narrow cases where a plate legally stays on the car, and none of them is an ordinary sale: inheritance, a transfer between immediate family members, a transfer that follows the sale of a business, and a historical or personalised plate where the former owner of both the vehicle and the plate authorises the reassignment. The manual notes the family case carefully - plates may stay with the vehicle upon transfer between immediate family members with consideration, but the transaction is not exempt from tax.
The buyer does not need your plates and is not left stranded without them, because South Dakota makes the seller supply the substitute. The free forty-five-day seller's permit is the buyer's authority to drive the car off your driveway, and the state charges you nothing for it.
SDCL 32-5-2.10 is one sentence long and it does not offer you days: at the time of sale of a vehicle, the seller shall file a report of sale with the department indicating the purchaser's name and address. Failure to file such a report is a Class 2 misdemeanor. Three routes satisfy it. A recently issued South Dakota certificate carries a tear-off form attached to the bottom of the title, and the manual makes the seller responsible for completing it and forwarding it to the county treasurer's office. A seller can file it online through the state's vehicle portal. Or Form 1024 does the same job on paper.
What the report buys you is narrower than people assume, and the department says so itself: the report of sale serves only as notification of a sale and does not cause any action to be taken against the title or registration record. The car stays in your name on the record until your buyer walks into a county treasurer's office. What the filing does is date-stamp the state's knowledge that you sold it, which is why Form 1024's own instruction says it may protect you from liabilities resulting from driving or movement of the vehicle after the date of the sale.
Do not cancel the insurance the moment the money lands.
Two things in South Dakota outlive the handshake. Your plates are still registered to you until you physically take them off and the county attaches them to something else, and your name is still on the title record until the buyer applies. Pull the plates first, file the report of sale the same day, photograph the completed assignment, and only then ring the insurer - and if the buyer is still sitting on the title at day forty-six, SDCL 32-3-27 lets you file a written complaint that makes their delay a Class 2 misdemeanor rather than your problem. SDCL 32-3-27, late application for certificate.
South Dakota Department of Revenue, Motor Vehicle Division, private party registration
Register at the county treasurer's office in the county where the buyer lives within 45 days of the purchase. South Dakota charges no sales tax on a vehicle. What the buyer pays instead is a 4% motor vehicle excise tax on the purchase price, in lieu of any tax levied by the sales and use tax chapters, and it lands at the county treasurer's counter rather than in your pocket. Two figures move it: a vehicle eleven or more model years old sold for $2,500 or less before trade-in is exempt outright, and a purchase with no bill of sale is taxed on the retail value in a nationally recognised dealers' guide instead of on the price. On top of the tax the counter collects a $10 title fee, a $2 technology fee, $10 for each lien noted, a $1 solid waste fee and a $1 highway patrol fee, plus the registration itself, which is priced on the vehicle's weight and age. An applicant with no South Dakota driver's licence and no physical address in the state pays $100 more.
What they need to bring:
There is no emissions programme and no periodic safety inspection to be current on before a South Dakota sale. Read the department's own list of what every title transfer must have and no inspection appears in it; read its 282-page manual and the single inspection procedure in the whole document is the one for a rebuilt vehicle, which costs $25 and is paid at the county treasurer with Form 1016. An ordinary used car changing hands between two private people never meets an inspector.
Motor Vehicle Division, 2023 Procedures Manual.
South Dakota 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 South Dakota and the rest of the guides.