Sell your car in Kansas — no notary, no inspection, and one $10 form worth filing
Kansas keeps a car sale refreshingly plain: no notary, no safety or emissions inspection, and the whole transfer happens on the back of the title. The two wrinkles worth knowing are electronic titles — standard here, with their own forms — and TR-216, the ten-dollar notice that takes your name off the vehicle record once the car is sold. Everything below is checked against the state's own paperwork.
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Same statewide paperwork, five very different markets. Wichita's hail arithmetic, Overland Park's late-model lease country, KCK's factory-town trucks, Topeka's storm-tested capital, and Manhattan's PCS-deadline corridor each get a page of their own below.
What Kansas requires when you sell
| Notary | Not for the sale. Kansas requires no notarization on the title assignment or a bill of sale. The only documents the state wants notarized involve liens — a release of lien, a consent from a Kansas lienholder, and the lienholder's portion of form TR-42. |
|---|---|
| The title form | Everything happens on the back of the Kansas title: purchase price, date of sale, odometer reading, plus the printed names and signatures of everyone selling and everyone buying. With the price entered on the title, a separate bill of sale (TR-312) isn't required. The buyer then has 60 days to register before penalties start — their clock, not yours. |
| Electronic titles | Kansas is an e-title state — a paper title exists only when there's no lien on record. Selling on an electronic title means using the Electronic Title Sales Agreement (TR-39a) or the power-of-attorney route, form TR-40, instead of hunting for a paper document you were never mailed. |
| Lost your title? | Form TR-720B (Manual Title Application), taken or mailed to your county treasurer's motor vehicle office. The replacement fee printed on the form is $10.00. If an old lien still shows on the record, a notarized lien release has to come first — start that piece early. |
| Protect yourself after the sale | Kansas's Seller's Notification of Sale, form TR-216, removes your name from the vehicle record once the assigned title is delivered — in the state's own words, it lets a seller "unilaterally create a presumption of sale/transfer." It's optional, costs $10.00 as printed on the current form, and can now be filed online through the iKan portal. Ten dollars against the buyer's future tickets is the best trade in this table. |
| License plates | They stay with you. The state's instruction is blunt: remove your plate once the title is assigned and the vehicle is delivered. The plate can move to a replacement vehicle — just note the state expects the previous vehicle to be disposed of within 60 days when you carry a plate over to a new purchase. |
| Sales tax | The buyer's bill, all of it. A private-party sale is an "isolated or occasional sale" under Kansas law, so you collect nothing; the buyer pays the tax to their own county treasurer at registration, calculated on the actual selling price written on the title. One more reason to write the real number. |
| Inspections | None. Kansas runs no safety or emissions inspection program at all. The only inspection anywhere in the system is a $20 Kansas Highway Patrol VIN check (form MVE-1) for vehicles arriving on out-of-state titles — a buyer-side errand, not yours. |
Every form number and fee above was checked against the Kansas Division of Vehicles' titling pages as of August 2026 — fees change by statute, so verify there before you rely on a dollar figure.
Asked by Kansas sellers
Do I need a notary to sell a car in Kansas?
No. The title assignment and bill of sale require no notarization. Notaries only enter the picture around liens — a release of lien, a Kansas lienholder's consent, or the lienholder's part of form TR-42. For a straightforward sale, a pen is the only equipment required.
What is form TR-216, and should I bother filing it?
It's the Seller's Notification of Sale — optional, $10, filed with the county treasurer or online through the state's iKan portal. It removes your name from the vehicle record after you hand over the assigned title, which the state describes as creating a presumption the car was sold. If the buyer dawdles on registering, that presumption is what stands between you and their parking tickets. File it the day you sell.
My Kansas title is electronic — can I still sell the car?
Yes, and it's routine. Kansas only prints a paper title when there's no lien on record, so plenty of sellers have never held theirs. Use the Electronic Title Sales Agreement (TR-39a) or the power-of-attorney form TR-40 to document the sale — purchase price and odometer included — and the transfer works exactly like a paper one.
Who pays the sales tax on a private car sale in Kansas?
The buyer, entirely. Kansas treats a private-party sale as an isolated or occasional sale, so the seller collects nothing. The buyer pays the tax to the county treasurer in their county of residence when they register, figured on the selling price entered on the title.