Vermont changed the rule that most people still repeat about it. Until 1 January 2024 the state only titled vehicles fifteen model years old or newer, and everything older moved on a registration certificate and a bill of sale. Act 41 of 2023 ended that. What is left is a grandfather clause frozen at one date, and the thing that destroys it is selling the car. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, Agency of Transportation's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Vermont titleA labelled diagram of the certificate, drawn from the statute that says what has to be on it, and the six entries in the assignment block that are yours.Open the walkthrough →Two different model-year lines run through a Vermont sale and they are two years apart. One decides whether the car has a certificate of title - 2009 and older, frozen. The other decides whether the mileage has to be disclosed - 2011 and newer, rolling forward one year at a time. A 2010 Vermont car sits between them: it needs no title and needs no odometer statement either, which is the combination that makes a buyer from a titling state certain something is wrong.
The department does not make you work out the federal rule. VT-005 prints it as a footnote in its own words: as of 1 January 2021, vehicles of model year 2011 and newer are subject to odometer disclosure for twenty years, so a 2011 has to be disclosed until 2031, a 2012 until 2032, and so on. The same form adds the two limits people forget - the vehicle has to be self-propelled and registered at 16,000 lbs or less.
Model year 2011 and newer, sold in 2026: Disclosed. Either on VT-005, or by having buyer and seller both sign the odometer statement on the back of the title - VD-119i gives you the choice in one line. Whole miles, no tenths, and the buyer signs too.
Model year 2010 and older, sold in 2026: Exempt. Ten years past the model year went by long ago and the twenty-year rule only caught vehicles from 2011 on. Leave the mileage boxes alone rather than inventing a disclosure the next seller has to explain.
Any model year 2009 or older, in any year: A different question with a different answer. This is the car Vermont did not title, and it is sold on the registration certificate. It still gets a bill of sale, and VD-119i says what that sheet has to carry: make, year, VIN, purchase price, mileage, signature of seller and date of sale.
You, the seller: Everything you sign sits in the assignment of ownership section on the back of the certificate. The department's instruction to the buyer is the clearest statement of what you have to do: all owners listed on the title must sign as sellers in the assignment of ownership section on the back of the title, the new owner's name must be entered on the transferred to line, and any liens listed must be released. Add a VT-005 bill of sale with the odometer statement on its reverse, and keep a photocopy of both before they leave the table.
The buyer: The buyer takes the assigned title and your bill of sale to a DMV office or posts them to Montpelier with a completed VD-119, and pays $42.00 for the title, the registration fee and 6% purchase and use tax in one transaction. Then they have fifteen days from the date of registration to get the car inspected, and there is no grace period on that.
No title? Read this before the buyer walks away. A 2009-or-older Vermont car has no title to sign, and that is not a problem you can fix by applying for one
The department's own buying-tips page tells your buyer "All vehicles are required to be titled in the State of Vermont... No title, no sale!" - and its title guide tells you that a 2009-or-older car registered in your name needs no title and is sold on the registration certificate and a signed bill of sale. Both pages are current. The guide is the one written for you; the tips page is written for the world after the sale, when the buyer's own registration produces the first title this car has ever had.
Until 1 January 2024, Vermont titled a vehicle only if it was fifteen model years old or newer at registration. Act 41 of 2023 amended 23 V.S.A. s. 2012, s. 2013 and s. 2017, and the department states the effect on the back of VT-025: titles are now required for all vehicles as of 1 January 2024. One exemption survived, and it is a grandfather clause rather than a cut-off. Subdivision 2012(10) exempts "a vehicle that is more than 15 years old on January 1, 2024 that has been registered in Vermont and has not had a change in ownership since January 1, 2024". Read the second half slowly. The exemption depends on the car not changing hands. Selling it is the change in ownership.
Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, Agency of Transportation, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
Two documents and a photocopier. The bill of sale is the one that carries the odometer statement, and on an older Vermont car it is the only document there is.
Vermont lenders hold the certificate and release it on paper. The first question is who physically has it and the second is what the payoff letter has to say.
Lost, altered, never issued, or belonging to a car that has no record anywhere. Vermont answers each of those with a different single-page document and one of them needs a notary.
Somebody signing in your place, and the car with more owners than the certificate has room for.
The designation that has to be made while the owner is alive, and the exception that moves two vehicles to a surviving spouse for nothing.
Branded, rebuilt, or carrying a VIN plate somebody has to look at before the department will believe it.
The half of a Vermont sale that has nothing to do with the title: the plates come off, the registration certificate goes back endorsed, and the tax on the car you sold may come back to you.
Vermont's answer is unusually blunt and it is printed as a question and answer on the department's own plates page: you are not required to return plates to DMV, if you want to return them please post them, and if you are selling your car do NOT leave your plates on the car. The tax page says the same thing from the other end - the plates belong to you, not the vehicle, and a new owner has to apply for their own plates and registration.
What you can do with them instead is move them. A car, motorcycle, truck or trailer registration transfers to another vehicle for $30.00 under 23 V.S.A. s. 323, on the same VD-119 the buyer never sees, and the remaining time on the old registration carries across. Section 324 sets the one limit worth knowing before you plan around it: the two vehicles have to be of the same broad class, except that a pleasure car registration and a truck registration are mutually transferable on payment of the difference.
There is no sticker to peel off. Act 41, signed on 1 June 2023, eliminated the annual and biennial validation sticker that used to sit on a Vermont plate, so the plate itself is the whole credential and taking it off the car is the whole of the physical job.
The statute is not as relaxed as the FAQ. Section 321 tells the transferor to remove the plates immediately, allows them to go on another unregistered vehicle you own if you apply within 24 hours, and then says that where no transfer application reaches the Commissioner "the number plates shall be returned to the Commissioner at the end of five days after the transfer of ownership". The department's published answer is that returning them is optional. Both are linked here, because a page that quoted only one of them would be leaving something out.
Vermont has no release-of-liability form and no notice-of-sale form, and people conclude from that there is nothing to file. There is. Section 321 says the registration expires the moment ownership transfers, and then puts a duty on you by name: the person in whose name the vehicle was registered "shall immediately return to the Commissioner the registration certificate assigned to the transferred vehicle, with the date of transfer and the name and residence of the new owner endorsed on the back". That endorsement is the Vermont notice of sale. It is four facts written on a document you already have.
The same sentence gives you the escape hatch: "the Commissioner may accept any other satisfactory evidence of the date of transfer and new ownership." A copy of the VT-005 with the buyer's name, address and the date on it is exactly that evidence. And myDMV carries a Mark Vehicle Sold option on the vehicle's own block, listed by the department alongside Renew Registration and Request Replacement Registration - which is the same act done online.
What actually ends your liability is s. 2023(d), and it is about the assignment rather than about the notice.
Vermont does not make the seller's protection depend on telling the department. Section 2023(d) says an owner who has delivered possession of the vehicle to the transferee and complied with the assignment and fee provisions "is not liable as owner for any damages thereafter resulting from operation of the vehicle". So the protection comes from doing the paperwork properly at the table: complete assignment, buyer's name and address filled in, liens released, certificate handed over. The endorsed registration is what makes the department's record agree with reality, which is a separate and slower problem - and the one that produces a letter about a car you sold in August. 23 V.S.A. s. 2023, transfer of interest in vehicle.
Register at a Vermont DMV office, or by post to Montpelier before they drive it, and Vermont publishes no day count for an in-state buyer - the 60 days people quote belongs to somebody moving to Vermont from another jurisdiction, not to a buyer. Purchase and use tax is 6%, charged on the purchase price or the J.D. Power clean trade-in value, whichever is greater. You collect none of it. If the buyer registers by post the department wants a printed J.D. Power valuation dated within the last seven days in the envelope. The title is $42.00 and each lien noted on it is $14.00. A one-year passenger car registration is $91.00 on petrol or diesel, $135.50 on a plug-in hybrid and $178.00 on a battery-electric car; two years are $167.00, $256.00 and $341.00.
What they need to bring:
Vermont has required safety inspections since 1935 and emissions inspections since 1997, and the two happen in one visit to one of about 1,600 privately owned licensed stations. None of it lands on a private seller. There is no certificate to hand over, no test to book before you list the car, and an unexpired sticker does not buy the buyer any time: the clock restarts at their registration. What does belong to you is one question, and it is on your own bill of sale. VT-005 asks, above your signature, whether this vehicle has failed an emissions test and been granted a time extension waiver in the past twelve months, and warns that a vehicle may not have two consecutive time extension waivers.
The one thing worth telling the buyer is the fifteen days, because the department does not send a reminder and the sticker they are looking at may belong to a different car. Vermont DMV, Vehicle Inspections.
Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, Agency of Transportation · figures and rules as of 2026-08-24. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Vermont and the rest of the guides.