A Utah transfer is short on ceremony - one signature, no witness, no seal - and long on small print that nobody mentions until the buyer is standing at a counter. Three of those details are worth more than the rest: the sheet you hand over when the title is missing is a transfer document in its own right, the emissions certificate in your glovebox is worth money to the buyer for eleven months, and the mileage rule Utah works to is twice as long as the federal one. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Utah State Tax Commission, Motor Vehicle Division's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Utah titleThe assignment on the back of the certificate, block by block, with the Division's own paper stand-in filled in beside it.Open the walkthrough →Almost every state exempts a car from disclosing its mileage the moment federal law lets it: ten model years for anything built in 2010 or earlier. Utah does not. Utah Code 41-1a-902 exempts a motor vehicle that is 20 years old or older and says nothing about model years at all, so a 2009 saloon that a Nevada or Arizona seller would leave blank still has to have its reading written in here. The trap is that the Division's own What Documents Do I Bring page prints the federal test instead - Odometer Disclosure Statement: Required if the passenger vehicle is model year 2011 or newer - so a seller can read the right agency's page and reach the wrong answer about their own car. Write the reading in whenever the vehicle is under twenty years old and the question goes away.
The reading goes in whole miles with no tenths, and one of three certifications is ticked: the actual mileage, the mileage in excess of the odometer's mechanical limits, or not the actual mileage with a warning of an odometer discrepancy. Utah's own instruction, printed on the dealer page and repeated on the forms, is that only one box may be checked and that nobody signs a blank statement on the promise that it will be filled in later.
Under 20 years old: The reading goes in and one certification is ticked. That is nearly every car being sold in Utah today, including model years the federal rule would let go.
20 years old or older: Exempt under 41-1a-902(4)(b). Nothing goes in the block, and nothing needs to.
Over 16,000 pounds manufacturer rating: Exempt by what the vehicle is rather than by its age, and separately exempt at 18,000 pounds if that is what it is registered for in Utah.
Sold new by the manufacturer to a federal agency: The fourth exemption on the statutory list, and the one nobody meets.
Utah Code 41-1a-902, odometer disclosure statement - contents - receipt - exceptions
You, the seller: Sign and print your name in the assignment on the back of the certificate, spelled the way the face of it spells you. Write in the odometer reading in whole miles and tick one of the three certifications, put in the date of sale and the purchase price, and hand the certificate to the buyer along with the registration card. Utah Code 41-1a-702 gives you a deadline for the handover that most sellers have never heard of: the certificate and the registration go to the buyer at the time of delivery, or within 48 hours after it.
The buyer: Signs to acknowledge the mileage you certified, writes in their name and the address they will register at, and takes the certificate to a Division office or through the online transfer service. There is nowhere on a Utah title for them to add anything else, and no witness line for either of you.
AND or OR. Look at the conjunction between the owner names on the face of the certificate before you arrange anything. The Division's rule is that “And” requires that both owners must sign to transfer or change a title, while “or” requires that only one owner sign to transfer or change a title. Utah Code 41-1a-702 adds the case the web page leaves out: where the title shows two names with no conjunction printed between them at all, it is read as an “and” and both signatures are needed.
Where one of two “and” owners has died, the survivor still signs - but the survivor signs in a prescribed format, and the Division prints it: Deceased Person's Name by Your Name as survivor.
One sentence from the Division settles it: no notary is needed to sign off on a title. There is no acknowledgement block on a Utah certificate, no seal box, no commission line and no witness rule, and a notary stamp added on top of the assignment is an alteration on a document where alteration is what gets the packet turned back. Where a notary does turn up on Utah motor vehicle paper it is on the survivorship affidavit and on the Tax Commission's power of attorney, and neither of those is a title.
Utah State Tax Commission, Motor Vehicle Division, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One certificate, one bill of sale the Division treats as compulsory, and the handful of Tax Commission forms a private seller in Utah actually meets.
A lender's name on the face of the certificate, and the one Utah form that moves a vehicle out of a default rather than out of a sale.
The title is lost, the vehicle has never had one, or the identification number is unreadable. Utah has a route out of each, and one of them doubles as the transfer itself.
Signing through somebody else - and the Tax Commission form that looks like the answer and is not.
An estate small enough for an affidavit, and the exact wording the Division wants on the seller's line.
A total loss, a branded title and the disclosure that has to travel with the car every time it is sold again.
The registration ends itself the moment you transfer the title. What is left is the metal, and a personalised combination worth keeping.
Utah plates belong to the owner rather than to the vehicle, so the default is that they come off before the buyer drives away. What changed in 2024 is that the default is now only a default. Utah Code 41-1a-701 reads: unless an owner has included the transfer of a license plate as part of a sale, trade, or ownership release of a vehicle, the owner shall remove the license plate or plates from the transferred vehicle. Selling the plate with the car is a decision you are allowed to make, and the bill of sale has a tick box for it - but if you make it, the buyer has to apply to the Division to have the plates assigned to them, and until they do the metal on that car still answers to your name.
If the plate comes off, you have twenty days and two lawful options: forward the plates to the division to be destroyed, or have the plates assigned to another vehicle. There is no fee for either, no form to fill in for the first, and no receipt - the registration on the sold car expired the moment you transferred the title, so what you are holding is already a dead plate.
A personalised plate is a different animal and is treated separately by 41-1a-413: an owner who sells the vehicle must immediately apply to display it on another vehicle they own, or surrender it and release their priority to that combination. Form TC-840 does both halves on one sheet, which is why the bill of sale points at it.
Publication 9 manages to say both things three pages apart. Under registration it reads that plates are transferable with the sale of a vehicle; under What to Do If You Sell Your Car it reads, with no exception at all, remove your license plates from the vehicle. The statute is the tie-breaker, and the safe reading is that leaving them on is a choice you have to make deliberately rather than one you can drift into.
The Division publishes three ways to report a sale and no deadline for any of them. Online through the Motor Vehicle Portal, by post or email with a written notification carrying the vehicle year, make, plate or vehicle identification number and the owner's signature - or a TC-502 Application to Cancel Registration in place of writing your own letter - or by telephone on 1-800-DMV-UTAH. Publication 9 adds a fax number and the same three facts. Nothing in Title 41 Chapter 1a sets a period for it, which is unusual enough to be worth saying out loud rather than inventing a number.
Do it the same evening anyway, because the thing that actually protects you is separate and automatic. Utah Code 41-1a-708 releases the owner who has made a bona fide sale and delivered possession, the certificate of registration and the properly endorsed certificate of title from liability for damages thereafter resulting from negligent operation by another. That protection turns on what you handed over, not on what you filed - so the report is housekeeping, and the handover is the defence.
The plate is the exposure, not the paperwork.
The Division's warning to a seller is about metal, not filing: if you do not remove your license plate you may be liable for any parking or traffic violations occurring while your plate remains on the car, and Publication 9 lengthens the list to towing, storage and impoundment fees. Keep your insurance running until the plate is physically in your hand or the buyer's assignment has gone through, because a plate that is still on a car in somebody else's driveway is still a plate the state can trace to you. Utah State Tax Commission, Publication 9, what to do if you sell your car.
Register at any Motor Vehicle Division office or through the online transfer service before they drive it - Utah Code 41-1a-703 says the transferee shall present the endorsed certificate and apply for a new title and registration before operating or permitting the operation of a transferred vehicle on a highway, and a temporary permit is what covers the gap. Sales and use tax is entirely theirs and the Division collects it at the counter, at the combined rate for the place the vehicle will be registered. There is no family exemption in Utah: the Division says in terms that sales tax is due on vehicle sales between family members. The title itself costs $6.00. Registration, the age-based uniform fee or the property assessment fee, and the plate are separate and are theirs.
What they need to bring:
Emissions testing in Utah is a county programme rather than a state one, and Publication 9 names the five: as a prerequisite for registration, emission inspections are required in Cache, Davis, Salt Lake, Utah and Weber counties. What makes it worth a seller's attention is a line in the statute rather than on any web page. Utah Code 41-6a-1642 says that if the title of a used motor vehicle is being transferred, the owner may use an emissions inspection certificate issued for the motor vehicle during the previous 11 months. The certificate you bought for your own renewal is transferable to your buyer for the best part of a year - so find it before you list the car, and hand it over with the title.
A Utah emissions certificate is valid for two months from its issue date for a renewal, and for eleven months where it is carried across a change of ownership under Utah Code 41-6a-1642(10). Safety inspections are a separate question and the answer is usually no: Publication 9 says most vehicles do not require a safety inspection for Utah registration. Utah State Tax Commission, vehicle inspections.
Utah State Tax Commission, 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 Utah and the rest of the guides.