Georgia Title Transfer in a Private Sale: Assignment, TAVT and 7-Day Filing

In a Georgia private sale, the seller assigns the title on the reverse side (buyer name, address, sale date, odometer), both parties sign, the seller keeps the plates, and the buyer titles and registers at the county tag office with Form MV-1, paying the $18 title fee, $20 plate fee and Title Ad Valorem Tax (TAVT) at 7.0% of fair market value. Georgia Department of Revenue pages for casual sales put that filing window at 7 days from purchase. Miss that clock and you still owe TAVT plus whatever late penalties your county assesses.

I spent the evening of October 15, 2026 reading the Georgia DOR casual-sale and TAVT pages and the georgia.gov "Sell a Motor Vehicle" guide (last updated June 2026). Note the agency name: titles and tags run through the Department of Revenue, not DDS. DDS handles driver licenses. A lot of forum posts mix those up, and that alone can send you to the wrong counter.

What the seller has to do

Georgia.gov's sell guide is blunt about the paperwork. You complete the form on the reverse of the Certificate of Title with the purchaser's full legal name exactly as it appears on their driver license or ID card, their current address, the date of sale and the odometer reading. Every seller listed on the title prints and signs. If the owner is a company, the authorized agent prints the company name, signs and writes their position. Every buyer does the same. Hand the assigned title to the buyer and keep a copy of the transfer and any bill of sale for your own file.

Plates stay with the seller. Georgia.gov says license plates and tags do not travel with the vehicle. You can hold them, move them to another vehicle you own or surrender them to DOR for cancellation. Cancel the registration first, then cancel the insurance tied to that plate. Skipping that order is how people keep getting tickets and insurance renewals for a car they already sold.

Form T-7, the Georgia bill of sale, is useful evidence of the deal and the odometer acknowledgment even when the title itself is the ownership document. DOR's casual-sale page only requires a bill of sale when the vehicle is 1985 or older and does not need a title. For 1986 and newer titled cars, the assigned title is the core proof, but a filled T-7 still helps if the county asks how the price was set.

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What the buyer brings to the county tag office

DOR's casual-sale page says you finish title and registration at the county tag office in the buyer's county of residence. Bring a valid Georgia driver license or ID, the original title properly assigned with every prior lien released in the spaces on the title, Form MV-1 (Title/Tag Application), proof of insurance (either already filed into the state's insurance database or an insurance binder), and an emissions certificate if your county requires one. Pay the $18 title fee, the $20 license plate fee, TAVT and any penalties due.

If the car was never titled in Georgia, or it came from a non-title state or country, DOR also wants Form T-22B (Certification of Inspection) and, for a non-title jurisdiction, the out-of-state registration document assigned into your full legal name. Out-of-state paper is where people get stuck: a lienholder in another state may refuse to release the title until the loan is paid, and Georgia will not invent a clean title for you.

TAVT is not sales tax, and the sale price may not be the tax base

Georgia replaced sales tax on titled vehicles with TAVT. DOR's vehicle-tax page states the current rate is 7.0% of fair market value, paid once when the vehicle is titled. For a used car, DOR's TAVT FAQ says fair market value comes from the state motor vehicle assessment manual (an average of wholesale and retail), not from whatever number you and the seller shook hands on. Private sales get no trade-in reduction. On a car the manual values at $10,000, budget about $700 in TAVT before plate and title fees, then confirm the exact figure with DOR's TAVT estimator or your county tag office, because assessment values change.

Family transfers and a few military and first-responder categories can drop that rate a lot (DOR lists a 0.5% family rate with Form MV-16 when prior TAVT was already paid on a Georgia title), but those are special cases. A normal Craigslist deal is the full 7.0%. New Georgia residents pay a different 3% rate under a July 1, 2019 law when they first title a car here; that is a residency rule, not a private-sale discount.

Brands, floods and the check you do before money moves

Look at the brand line on the title before you sign anything. Georgia's salvage and rebuilt rules are separate from a clean private-sale transfer, and a rebuilt brand changes insurance and resale even when the paperwork is otherwise perfect. Our guides on Georgia salvage and rebuilt title rules and Georgia rebuilt title inspection cover what those brands mean. For cars coming in from another state, out-of-state title transfer and history reports walks through the brand and odometer traps we see most often.

Match the VIN on the dash, door sticker and title before you wire money. Federal brand data is searchable at NMVTIS, and NHTSA's vPIC decoder will confirm year, make and plant against the ad. A history report fills in accidents and auction lanes the title never lists. We resell CARFAX and AutoCheck under license and are not affiliated with CARFAX, AutoCheck or Experian; lately a guest CARFAX runs about $5.50, members about $4.50 and the pair about $6.75, while retail often sits near $39.99 to $44.99. Confirm those numbers at checkout. More private-sale report habits sit in CARFAX for private-party sales.

So look, the Georgia deal is simple on a clean paper title and ugly the minute a lien, an electronic title, a non-title state or a salvage brand shows up. Do the VIN and brand check before you meet at the tag office, not after the cashier has already quoted your TAVT.