Washington gives the seller something most states do not: a form of your own, with a clock on it. Sign the title over and you are half done - the Report of Sale is the half that stops the next owner's parking tickets arriving at your address. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Washington State Department of Licensing's own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Washington titleThe release of interest, the odometer line and the eleven blocks the statute puts on the page - with the one signature you may make unwitnessed.Open the walkthrough →On the Buy and register a vehicle page the department flattens the federal rule into a single model year: model year 2011 or newer, disclose; 2010 or older, exempt. That sentence is correct for a sale happening today and wrong for one happening on 2 January 2031, when a 2011 finally ages out. Anybody who learned the flat version and then sold a 2011 in five years' time would leave the disclosure blank and hand the buyer an application the counter will not take.
The durable version is on DOL's Vehicle title application instructions page, and it is the federal one at 49 CFR 580.17: a vehicle made in or before the 2010 model year is exempt once it is transferred at least 10 years after 1 January of the year it was made, and a vehicle made in or after the 2011 model year is not exempt until 20 years after that date. DOL prints the arithmetic itself - transfer in 2020 and 2010-or-older is exempt; transfer in 2031 and 2011-or-older is exempt.
Model year 2010 and older, sold in 2026: Exempt. Ten years past 1 January of the model year has long gone, so the mileage box on the certificate can be left alone.
Model year 2011 and newer, sold in 2026: Not exempt. The reading goes into the odometer disclosure section printed on the face of the certificate itself, in whole miles.
Anything over 16,000 lb gross vehicle weight rating, or not self-propelled: Exempt whatever the year, under the same federal section that sets the two age bands.
Washington State Department of Licensing, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Sign the release of interest section printed on the certificate of ownership itself. That signature needs no notary, no witness and no appointment - it is the one Washington signature you are allowed to make at the kitchen table. Hand the signed certificate to the buyer, give them an odometer statement if one is required, and then file your Report of Sale.
The buyer: The buyer completes form 420-001, the Vehicle Title Application, and signs it in front of a notary or a vehicle licensing agent - never before. They have 15 days from delivery to lodge it, and DOL charges $50 on the sixteenth day.
The notary question in Washington has two answers, and which one applies depends on the piece of paper. A release of interest written on the certificate of ownership is exempt from notarisation by name. A release of interest written on anything else - form 420-050, form 420-040, a letter - has to be notarised or certified. Rule 308-56A-265 draws the line in one sentence, and everybody who assumes Washington is a notary state, or that it is not, has read only half of it.
Certified is the cheaper half of the phrase. A vehicle licensing agent or subagent can certify a signature instead of a notary, and every form in the set prints the same reminder: you do not need your signature notarized if you sign in front of a WA vehicle licensing agent.
Rule 308-56A-215 does not say the department may refuse an altered certificate. It says any alteration or erasure voids the certificate of ownership, unless documentation satisfactory to the department goes in with it. There is no white-out that survives that sentence and no crossing-out that makes the number underneath acceptable - the way out is a duplicate title, or a Certificate of Fact explaining what happened.
Washington State Department of Licensing, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One signature on the certificate that needs nobody watching, one form the buyer signs in front of a notary, and one form that is yours alone and has five business days on it.
Washington lets lenders keep the title as a data record rather than a document, so the first question is whether a piece of paper exists at all.
Lost, wrong, or belonging to somebody who cannot be found. Washington answers all three with an affidavit, and the last of them takes three years.
A seller who cannot get to the counter, and an owner who cannot produce a Washington driver licence.
One form covers both an inheritance with no probate and a car handed over by a court, and a county clerk signs the second half.
Total loss, destroyed, or sitting in a field. Each has its own reporting clock and none of them is the Report of Sale.
The plates leave with you. The only plate form Washington publishes is for the ones that never made it home.
DOL puts the duty on you and gives the reason in the same breath: as the seller, you are legally obligated to remove the license plates from your vehicle, and this protects you from being held liable for towing charges, parking tickets, speed camera tickets, and toll bills. The buyer cannot use them under any circumstances, and on their side of the counter the instruction is the mirror image - since the vehicle has changed ownership, you must get new license plates.
You then have three choices and only three. Move the plates to another vehicle you own, which costs $10 and has to be like for like - a car plate onto a car, a truck plate onto a truck. Hand them in at a vehicle licensing office, or post them to the department at 1125 Washington Street SE, Olympia, WA 98504, with the correct postage on the envelope. Or keep them: DOL allows old plates as mementos so long as you remove or invalidate the tabs and never display them on a vehicle.
Twelve plate types are not yours to recycle and have to come back to a counter - personalised plates, disabled parking plates, collector vehicle and horseless carriage plates, baseball stadium plates, amateur radio plates, disabled American veteran, Purple Heart, Medal of Honor, Pearl Harbor survivor and Gold Star plates, and commercial plates rated over 12,000 pounds.
There is no plate surrender form to fill in, because Washington does not publish one. Every vehicle-topic form on DOL's index was enumerated looking for it; the only plate form in the set is 420-504, and that one is for a plate that has been lost, stolen or mutilated. The buyer, meanwhile, is not stranded - a trip permit costs $36, lasts three consecutive days and is bought in person at a licensing office.
This is the form that makes Washington different from a state like Pennsylvania, which publishes no seller's notice at all. Form 420-062 tells the department the car has gone, and RCW 46.12.650(2) gives you five business days from the sale to get it in. Not five days: five, excluding Saturdays, Sundays, and state and federal holidays, which is rule 308-56A-525(2) word for word. Sell on the Friday of a long weekend and the clock does not start until Tuesday.
Missing the deadline carries no fine. What it carries is your name: until the report is on the record you are still the registered owner the department knows about, and rule 308-56A-295 says so plainly - if a report of sale has not been properly filed, the registered owner on department records remains liable for removal, storage and disposal fees on an abandoned vehicle. The same rule set warns that an incomplete report may not protect the seller from any civil or legal action if the vehicle is subsequently abandoned or involved in illegal activity.
Washington State Department of Licensing, private party registration
Register at a vehicle licensing office - most of them privately run subagents rather than state counters - within 15 days of the purchase. Use tax rather than sales tax: the buyer pays 0.3% motor vehicle sales and use tax plus the retail rate at their own address, worked out on DOL's fair market value rather than automatically on what they paid you. The title application fee is $15, with a $6.50 filing fee and an $18 service fee on a title-only transaction, or $12.50 and $29 where registration is issued at the same time. A quick title printed while they wait adds $50.
What they need to bring:
The Department of Ecology ran the emission check programme and it ended: after 38 years, Washington's emission check program ended Jan. 1, 2020, and vehicle owners are no longer required to have their vehicle's emissions tested before renewing their vehicle registration. There is nothing to book, nothing to pass and nothing to hand the buyer. What survives is the Clean Car Law, RCW 46.16A.060, and it bites in exactly one place - a nearly new car that has barely been driven. Ecology's own notice is here.
There is no retrofit and no repair route - the makes and models are certified before they are built, and DOL warns that altering an emission control system to get round it is illegal under state and federal law. DOL, Clean Car Law emission requirements.
Washington State Department of Licensing · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Washington and the rest of the guides.