A signed title, a Form 130-U the buyer takes to their county, and a transfer notification you file within thirty days. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Texas titleThe document the whole Texas transfer runs on, filled in box by box - and the two clocks that start the day you sign it.Open the walkthrough →Registration expired? What a lapse actually costs in Texas — and whether the missed years are billed at all.
A signed title, a Form 130-U the buyer takes to their county, and a transfer notification you file within thirty days.
A gift is not a cheap sale in Texas - it is a separate tax at a flat $10, on a Comptroller affidavit that has to be sworn and handed over in person.
Texas gives three equally valid ways to release a lien and will accept an original signature on any of them - and a copy of none.
Lost, never arrived, or no evidence of ownership at all. Texas separates the certified copy from the bonded title, and they go to different places.
Signing from another state, another country, or a hospital bed - and the narrow, felony-certified authority Texas accepts for it.
No probate, an affidavit every surviving heir signs, and a notary.
Total losses you kept, flood cars, rebuilds, and the disclosure the buyer has to sign before they take one away.
In Texas the plates come off with you, and the transfer notification asks in writing whether you took them.
| Item | Amount | The detail that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Title transfer | $28 | COUNTY VARIATION — the fee is $28 OR $33 depending on the BUYER'S county of residence, not the county where the transaction is processed. … source |
| Replacement title, if yours is lost | $2 | How and where to get one |
| Plate transfer | $0 | Texas DOES permit plate transfer, and TxDMV states it is free. Texas plates stay with the SELLER, not the vehicle — the seller removes the plates and may move them to another vehicle. … source |
| Tax on the sale (buyer pays) | 6.25% | RATE: Texas Comptroller states verbatim: 'Sales: 6.25 percent of sales price, minus any trade-in allowance. … source |
Work out your own sale on the 50-state transfer cost calculator, or see what a lapsed registration costs if the car has been sitting.
Form 130-U gives you three tick boxes beside the odometer reading - Not Actual, Exceeds Mechanical Limits, Exempt - and no guidance on which applies. Exempt is the one people reach for on an older car, and for anything built in 2011 or later it will not be true for years yet.
Which exemption you get turns on the model year, under 49 CFR 580.17. Built in 2010 or before, and the car falls out of disclosure once it is ten model years old. Built in 2011 or after, and the wait doubles to twenty - the regulation illustrates it with the year 2031, when model year 2011 finally goes exempt. A 2016 F-150 sold today is nowhere near either line, so the reading goes on the 130-U.
2010 model year or older: Exempt. You may tick the Exempt box on the 130-U.
2011 model year or newer: Not exempt. A 2011 becomes exempt in 2031, a 2015 in 2035. Write the reading in, with no tenths.
Over 16,000 lb GVWR, or not self-propelled: Exempt regardless of age, under the same regulation.
You, the seller: Sign the title assignment, and sign the Form 130-U in the Signature(s) of Seller(s), Donor(s), or Trader(s) row. Texas does not require a notary for an ordinary private-party assignment.
The buyer: The buyer signs the 130-U as the applicant and takes it to the county with a government-issued photo ID - the form requires one of eleven listed types on every title application.
Your signature can be a fax. Theirs cannot. Form 130-U says it plainly: an application form may be reproduced or faxed, and the seller's signature may be reproduced or faxed - but a completed form must contain the original signature of the buyer.
That asymmetry is genuinely useful when you have already left town. It does not extend to the title assignment itself, and it does not extend to a release of lien, where Texas requires an original signature and will not take a copy.
Texas prints the same line above the signature block on form after form: State law makes falsifying information a third degree felony. It sits on the 130-U, the release of lien, the power of attorney, the affidavit of heirship and the bonded title application. It is not decoration - these are sworn documents, and the sale price you write on the tax line is one of the things being sworn to.
Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
The TxDMV’s wording is that the seller has the option to remove their license plates and registration sticker from the vehicle. Take them off at handover - the transfer notification asks in writing whether you did.
Option one: move them to a vehicle you are buying, if the classification is the same. Option two: keep them for a future vehicle - but the registration sticker does not transfer with them. Option three is the one nobody expects: if you neither transfer nor keep them, the plates “must be disposed of by defacing the front of the plates, either with permanent black ink or another method in order to prevent fraudulent use.” That is not advice, it is what the page says has to happen.
Taking the plates has a consequence for the buyer, and they will ask you about it. If the sale happens on a Saturday or Sunday and you remove the plates, the buyer needs a Vehicle Transit Permit to drive the car to the county tax office legally. It is valid for five calendar days and only one may be issued per vehicle sale.
The dealer form that turns up while searching for any of this - the VTR-904 - is for licensed dealers moving a buyer’s plates at the time of title application, and its first two words say so.
Go with them. The TxDMV's first instruction to a Texas seller is not a form at all: “accompany the buyer to your county tax office to ensure a vehicle title application is filed.” Then file the Texas Motor Vehicle Transfer Notification (VTR-346) within 30 days, online at TxDMV.gov/VTN.
The reason is on the same page. A vehicle has to be titled in the buyer’s name within 30 days of the sale, and failing to transfer it properly “could result in the seller being held responsible for tickets, toll violations or even crimes committed with the vehicle.” Filing the notification inside 30 days is what removes that: in the TxDMV’s own words, you “cannot be held responsible for parking tickets and toll violations that have been committed by the person who purchased the vehicle.”
Selling to a dealer does not get you out of this. It is the case where it matters most.
The TxDMV spells it out: a dealer is not required to title the vehicle in the dealership’s name, so “the vehicle stays in your name until it is sold to an individual, which may take months or in some cases, years.” A trade-in or a sale to a dealer is exactly when a seller assumes the paperwork is somebody else’s problem, and exactly when it is not. Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, registration cancellation.
Texas Department of Motor Vehicles, private party registration
Register at a county tax assessor-collector's office within 30 days of the purchase. Texas charges 6.25% motor vehicle sales tax and the buyer pays it, on the same Form 130-U that applies for the title. The title application fee is $28 or $33, decided by the buyer's county of residence, with a separate $2.50 fee to transfer the current registration on top of it.
What they need to bring:
As of 1 January 2025 non-commercial vehicles are no longer required to obtain a safety inspection prior to vehicle registration. That is the TxDMV's own sentence, and it is the change House Bill 3297 made. Emissions is a separate matter and it did not go away.
Seventeen counties in total, and they are the populated ones - which is why the change reads as bigger than it is for most sellers. TxDMV, register your vehicle.
Texas Department of Motor Vehicles · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
For the local side of this paperwork, our city pages cover the Harris County Tax Office and EZ TAG steps in Houston, Dallas County title branches and replacement titles near Dallas and bonded-title VIN inspections and toll rules in Austin. They also cover the Bexar County Tax Office and PCS moves in San Antonio and Tarrant County title offices and junked-car rules in Fort Worth.
See also: selling a car in Texas and the rest of the guides.