• Hi Guest!
    You can help ensure that British Car Forum (BCF) continues to provide a great place to engage in the British car hobby! If you find BCF a beneficial community, please consider supporting our efforts with a subscription.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

Q for Washington State residents

Share this page

Gerard

Gerard

Luke Skywalker
Country flag
Offline
A friend of mine is selling his 1967 LBC to someone in Washington State.

Can someone tell me what WS DMV requires when titling an out of state (California) car?

The buyer is flying into SFO tomorrow and we want to make sure he's sent home with the necessary paperwork.

We have the California title and a Bill of Sale. Anything else needed?



Thanks
 
They like to see a hand written bill of sale up there- seems strange but they would rather see something handwritten than a form with the info entered.
That and the signed pink-slip will do it.
BillM

-they will have him go to an inspection station to verify the VIN, he NEEDS to verify that they wrote down the VIN correctly, they don't always and I have had to correct it twice now.
 
It's not too bad... and no more picky than Oregon. The key is to have all owners sign off on the title and to have a bill-of-sale (that will also be used to zap you for sales tax in WA). :laugh: The hardest part is to deal with the melting pot that is the DMV office. :yesnod:
 
The issue really is the "Rule of the day".
In the past, bills of sale were required. Then they weren't. Sometimes they were ignored (twice for me), both times I had the vehicle across the street on a trailer when they decided the vehicle was worth far more for sales tax purposes than I had on the BoS.
Know a guy who bought an early 70's GM pickup, body rotted to the window sills, to use for hauling stuff to the dump. Paid $500....DMV decided on the spot it was worth about $5,000 and taxed accordingly.
You never know.
Sometimes they require State Patrol inspections for VIN confirmation, sometimes for equipment operation (know a guy who brought an early Chevelle in from California, typical rotted wiper blades, stopped the inspection until he got it fixed). The latest is scale weight.
Now they tax you on the weight of the vehicle.
My Jag was licensed on cargo Tare weight, a WHOLE lot more than it actually weighed.
You have a choice.
Either a Washington certified scale or documentation.
My documentation was Thorsen, which I produced, lowering my annual fees a bunch.
What will the specific office require when you arrive?
No telling, unless someone has done it in the last two days.

They also do NOT like short VIN numbers.
My Jag is 118011. Period.
Took a bit of arguing......the Washington State Title said 118011, the VIN stamps on the body and plate said 118011, but they could not get their head around so few a numbers.

Make sure the numbers match, and match the title, and that all items work. If black plates, lose them. Tell the DMV the PO kept them or something like that.
If they are important to you, keep the old registration and plates for future use and sales opportunities.

Dave
 
Good points. Kinda sad that the actual DMV office you go to should matter... but that's definitely the case in Oregon. Here they will come out to your car to verify the VIN (but that's about it).
 
The last time I titled a classic vehicle (my Sprite), the lady at the DMV did not even look at the bill of sale. She pulled out a book that had the value of the car listed by condition of the vehicle. It went from 1 (parts car) up to 5 (concour restored). She left it up to me to determine what condition my vehicle was in. I paid the tax on that determination and walked out with my new title/registration.
 
That was one of the sequences of "rules" we went through, altho last time that happened to me, proof of condition was MY job...hence the vehicle on a trailer outside.
The guy with the rusted GM pickup had no choice.
Like I said, you never know.

Buy any booze lately?
See what they did there?
 
TOC said:
Buy any booze lately?
See what they did there?
Click to expand...

Loads of people are flooding across the Columbia River to buy in Oregon. :yesnod:
 
The whole thing was a planned assault. Get "out" of the business, get rid of all the state employees, and buildings......let it go to privatization, and sneak in a bottle tax and liter tax they didn't happen to mention.
Make all their money and more, plus no out-go.....gotta be a good deal.
 
Thank god Inwas out of state military when I was there. Otherwise it would have been a nightmare.

At the time you could register any car you owned as out of state military (provided you were military of course) and only pay taxes according to your state. Worked well for me when I bought a 1969 Chevelle SS. The down side ...? The police loved to pull over cars with out of state military cards in the back window. Which is where you had to display it....bastages.
I feel confident in saying that as I'm the only person I know of who was ever pulled over and given an " estimated speeding" ticket. The cop said it looked like I was going too fast....! I had a field day with the cop in court. It did come back to haunt me though. I ran out of gas in said car (gas gauge went bad). I left a note on windshield " back in ten minutes out of gas". Yup, he towed it.... 85 bucks in the eighties was alot of money....for a petty officer third class.
 
TOC said:
The issue really is the "Rule of the day".
In the past, bills of sale were required. Then they weren't. Sometimes they were ignored (twice for me), both times I had the vehicle across the street on a trailer when they decided the vehicle was worth far more for sales tax purposes than I had on the BoS.
Know a guy who bought an early 70's GM pickup, body rotted to the window sills, to use for hauling stuff to the dump. Paid $500....DMV decided on the spot it was worth about $5,000 and taxed accordingly.
You never know.

Dave
Click to expand...

Dave, et al,

Looks like your prediction about values was spot on. The word I got today was that everything went smoothly with the BoS and title, but man-O-man, I can't believe what they did with the value. They made him come back with a print out of the NADA Guides value of the car, which was approximately $1000 more than he paid for the car.... :confuse: I would have been livid!... :wall: ... and I thought they were bad here in California. I guess since you guys don't have to pay state income tax, they have to make it up somehow, but I really don't get having to pay tax on money you didn't spend.
 
Here's the thing about paying taxes on the "value" of the car, not the actual price.

Most often, when making a private party transaction, the two people agree to a price and exchange money and title, BUT to AVOID paying taxes on the transaction, they list the price much lower on the Bill of Sale. I believe that almost everyone in the state who has sold or bought a car privately has done exactly that. When, after years of seeing Porsches that should be valued at --let's make up a number-- $25,000, but have a bill of sale listed at --- again let's make up a number-- $8000, the state must have decided to change the way they value cars for tax purposes. ... ..
 
I had a similar issue in Ohio. I bought a salvaged BMW M3 paid little for since I had to rebuild it. It was a seven year tax battle that I eventually lost. They literally said I didn't pay enough for the car. I said but it salvaged. ... They didn't care and added a thousand dollars tax to vehicle. I refused to pay and fought it for years. They finally got half the money in a settlement. I had to give in because I was buying a new house.... Tax man always wins....
 
Same here in Ontario. For the same reasons. Now if you want to transfer an older car they want to see an appraisal. This BTW why everyone shoul transfer ownership before restoration.
 
Pythias said:
Most often, when making a private party transaction, the two people agree to a price and exchange money and title, BUT to AVOID paying taxes on the transaction, they list the price much lower on the Bill of Sale. I believe that almost everyone in the state who has sold or bought a car privately has done exactly that.
Click to expand...

In fact, in my youth, this was the grand tradition. Sellers would be happy to change the bill-of-sale to something low so-as to reduce the sales tax (and that was when the sales tax was something like 4% - not 8+% today). Looks like the Washington DMV has put a strong stop to that.

Thankfully, in Oregon (no sales tax), there is a flat fee... but that has finally risen too (as many Washingtonians near the border used to try to license in Oregon - which is a big no-no that State Patrol really clamped down on).
 
In the state of libera......errrr.....Washington, you can "gift" a car.....once in it's life.


I always thought the "fix" should be in a dispute over value, the state should be forced to buy it from you for their stated value.
The guy with the $500 rusted out pickup could have made $4500 off the state....and it would shortly straighten out their shenanigans.

At one point, several decades ago, you had to drive (or haul) the vehicle into the King County Courthouse in downtown Liber....ooops....Seattle..to have it "valued" by the assessor.

Latest "tax" issue on housing I ran into was gravel driveways. They started a "surface water management" tax 15 or 20 years ago covering impermeable surfaces...so I left my driveway gravel.
Too many folks did that, apparently, so the State decided that gravel was "impermeable", and taxed accordingly.

Two or three times we have voted on (and passed) $30 car tabs. They work around that immediately, adding "fees" that they get the Evergreen State College Judiciary Branch to say are not "taxes" and run the total right back up.
They screamed bloody murder when I got tired of it and transferred my 1949 Willys street rod to "collector" plates to avoid the annual dig in my wallet.

They add a $5 charge for parks on each renewal....you can "delete", but you have to look for it and deselect it. Having to opt-out was supposed to be a disallowed function, but, hey, they can do what they want to.

About 30 years ago, my brother and I bought a 1929 Ford Model "A" Tudor...in a trailer.....body sides, cowl, doors, back, frame, fenders, engine, axles...all apart.

I transferred the title as "TPO", Title Purposes Only, to avoid the headaches of value....and 7 years later when it was at the point of driving, got plates. Worked around their taxation issues neatly.

Dave
 
Pythias said:
Here's the thing about paying taxes on the "value" of the car, not the actual price....

... BUT to AVOID paying taxes on the transaction, they list the price much lower on the Bill of Sale. ... ..
Click to expand...

Hi Bill,

Yeah, I get that, but still seems out of control, esp in cases where car are salvaged, damaged or in some state of moderate or extreme disrepair. I've never seen a buyer accept and buy a car based on NADA guide values, especially with since the economy has been so bad. Also, NADA only lists <span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">retail</span></span> values i.e. car dealers, not private party values like are distinguished with KBB. Dealers have many obligations not requires by private party sellers.

The irony is, this buyer did declare the actual purchase price and never asked for BoS for "tax purposes". But, you're right Bill, I think this is somewhat rare.

I forgot to add that they did not want the vintage California (Blue) plates.

Anyway, it's been an interesting education of how it's done elsewhere.

Thanks again to all.
 
Yeah, blue plates make good garage wall patches. Blacks are worth having.

Sales taxation out of control? Wait until NEXUS hits.
 
Back
Top