Wisconsin asks a private seller for three separate things and only one of them is the title. The other two are the plates, which are yours and are not supposed to survive the sale, and a thirty-day notification that exists in statute and, by the department's own account, never reaches the vehicle's record. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Wisconsin titleWisDOT's own void specimen of the front, the assignment block on the back drawn from the statute, and the five entries that are yours.Open the walkthrough →The seller page gives you a single model year and no arithmetic: model year 2011 or newer, write the reading in; anything older, do not. That is correct for a sale happening this week and it quietly expires. The rule underneath it is not a fixed year at all, and a seller who learns the short version and comes back to sell a 2011 in the 2030s will leave the box empty on a car that is still years away from being exempt.
Trans 154.05 is the durable version, in force since 1 January 2022, and it is the federal rule verbatim: a vehicle manufactured in or before the 2010 model year is exempt once it is transferred at least 10 years after 1 January of the calendar year corresponding to its designated model year, and a vehicle manufactured in or after the 2011 model year is not exempt until 20 years after that date. The rule prints its own worked example - in 2031 the exempt line stands at model year 2011, and 2011-and-newer vehicles do not become exempt until twenty years after their model year.
Model year 2010 and back, sold in 2026: Exempt. Ten years past 1 January of the model year went by long ago, so the mileage line on the back of the certificate stays empty.
Model year 2011 and forward, sold in 2026: Not exempt. Whole miles go on the back of the title, with one of the three notations beside them, and the buyer prints and signs their name on the same statement.
Anything not self-propelled, any moped, and anything ever registered above 16,000 pounds gross weight: Exempt whatever the year. Trans 154.05 names all three separately from the two age bands, and the weight one bites on a vehicle that has been registered heavy in any state, not only in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles, odometer disclosure
You, the seller: Everything you sign is on the back of the certificate, in the block the front of the title calls the ASSIGNMENT OF CERTIFICATE OF TITLE. Sign as the selling owner, write the odometer reading if the car is a 2011 or newer, tick the brand disclosure if it applies, write the price you were actually paid, and write the buyer's name and address in before the document leaves your hand. Then take the plates off.
The buyer: The buyer applies on the MV1 or through eMV Public, and posts the original title - not a photocopy - to Madison with the fee. If the car is going to be driven, WisDOT gives them two business days to title and register it.
AND or OR. Two names joined by the word "and" means every owner listed has to sign. Two names joined by "or" means any one of them may sign alone.
WisDOT states it on the seller page and repeats it in the MV2119's instructions, and it is worth reading off your own title before you agree a completion date - if the certificate says "and" and the co-owner is four hours away, that is a diary problem, not a paperwork problem. Wis. Stat. s. 342.15(1)(d) is what makes the "or" form work.
Printed vertically down the edge of every Wisconsin certificate, in white out of the blue guilloche: Any alteration, correction fluid, or erasure voids this title. Along the opposite edge it adds This document void without watermark - Hold to light to view. There is no tidy correction and no initialling over the top; a Wisconsin title that has been fixed is a Wisconsin title that has to be replaced, or explained on a Statement of Intent.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One block on the back of the certificate, one application that belongs to the buyer, and one thirty-day duty that belongs only to you.
Since 2012 a Wisconsin lender holds the paper, not you. The first question is whether a certificate exists in your hands at all.
Lost, wrong, altered, or signed in the wrong box. Wisconsin answers each with a different single-page form, and one of them exists purely because sellers sign as purchasers.
Somebody else collecting the title, an owner too young to hold one, and a vehicle owned by a trust.
One statement covers a spouse, a domestic partner, a stepchild and a stranger, and which box is ticked decides whether the $214.50 is charged at all.
Salvage, flood, junk and abandoned. Each has its own form and none of them is the ordinary title assignment.
They left with you, Wisconsin does not want them back and the registration is not refundable - which leaves two forms, one of them genuinely useful.
WisDOT's instruction on an ordinary car is not permission, it is a prohibition: never leave the license plates on an auto or light truck (8,000 pounds or under) when selling or junking the vehicle. They cannot be used by the person buying it, and the department is equally clear about what not to do with them - do not return the plates to DMV. You should destroy them (cut them up) if you are not going to use them on another vehicle.
The alternative to the scissors is to move them. Unexpired plates transfer free of charge to another vehicle of the same type belonging to you, your spouse or your domestic partner as defined by ch. 770 - auto to auto, light truck to light truck - with a renewal fee added only if they are within thirty days of expiring. What you cannot do is get money back: registration is refundable only if you ask before the registration period begins, which on a mid-year sale means never.
Five kinds of vehicle keep their plates in Wisconsin and none of them is a car: a truck registered at 10,000 pounds or more, a farm truck registered at 16,000 pounds or more, a moped, a trailer, and a recreational vehicle trailer. On anything in that list the plate belongs to the vehicle and stays bolted to it.
If they went with the car anyway - and they often do - there is a form for it, and it does something no other Wisconsin seller's paperwork does. Tick Left on vehicle when sold on the MV2514 and the department's own parenthesis says the result: plate will be notated as cancelled and vehicle notated as sold in DMV records.
Wis. Stat. s. 342.41 is titled Identity of buyer and it is written as a prohibition: no individual may sell a motor vehicle to another individual, including transferring a junk vehicle by bill of sale, unless within 30 days of the sale the seller reports to the department the identification number of the vehicle and the identity of the individual buyer. WisDOT collects four things rather than two - the VIN, who bought it, the price and the date - and it takes them only at sellernotify.wi.gov. There is no paper version of this anywhere in the forms index.
Read the department's next sentence before you decide you are safe. Once completed, you will have the option to print, email or save confirmation of your notification. It will not be noted on the vehicle record. The notification tells the state who bought the car; it does not take the car off your name. What updates the record is the buyer titling it, and what limits your exposure in the meantime is s. 342.15(3) - an owner who has delivered possession and complied with the assignment provisions is not liable as owner for damages afterwards - plus getting the plates off, or cancelled on an MV2514.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles, private party registration
Register at a DMV Customer Service Center, a third-party title and registration service provider, or the post within 2 days of the purchase. 5% Wisconsin sales tax on the purchase price, plus whatever county and city tax applies where they will keep the car - the buyer pays it to WisDOT with the application, and you collect nothing. Milwaukee is the outlier: 0.9% county tax and, inside the city, a further 2%. $214.50 to transfer the title, made of a $207 fee and a $7.50 supplemental fee, plus $85 for passenger plates and $12 to issue them if there is no plate to transfer. A counter costs $5 more than the post.
What they need to bring:
The Wisconsin Vehicle Inspection Program covers vehicles customarily kept in Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Washington and Waukesha counties, and nothing anywhere else in the state. Nothing about it lands on you as the seller: WisDOT notifies the owner when a test is due, and the trigger that matters here is on the far side of the sale - when a vehicle is purchased and registered (within 45 days), and again when an owner is added or removed on a vehicle title. Selling a car with an unexpired test does not save the buyer that visit, and selling one that is due a test does not stop you selling it.
A test done in another state counts: WisDOT accepts out-of-state OBDII results by email, fax or post, and where the county a vehicle is temporarily kept in has no testing at all the department grants a temporary exemption so the plates can still be renewed. WisDOT, emission testing.
Wisconsin Department of Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Wisconsin and the rest of the guides.