The Expert Podcast

If you're selling any type of an item or even a purchaser of an item Many times a document is required called a bill of sale And a bill of sale is basically a receipt showing the affirmative transfer of an item from one person to another Many times it's associated with a motor vehicle although it can be used in many other scenarios And we'll look at a few examples of documents and if you need to download some of these forms you can Reach our website which is shown on the screen And it will have PDF files of many types of a bill of sale document that you can download even some assistance on filling these in Remember we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice but these are some documents that may come in handy for your particular scenario Based on what you know about what you're selling or buying The first thing we'll look at is a general bill of sale This is used for personal property Things that are not titled like a motor vehicle or vessel which will look at Very shortly This can be used at let's say an antique auction Or if you're buying something on Craigslist Or buying something let's say at a flea market and you want to have a firm receipt showing that you purchased this item It may help you for taxes It may help you prove ownership for insurance Sometimes you just want to have this to show that you bought it to make sure that you know That it's not stolen So using this type of bill of sale is pretty simple You put the name of the seller The price that was paid What the of the item is And then usually some type of recital that the seller is transferring this ownership to you for this re for this amount of money And this is a generic example of a bill of sale
Bill sales most often associated with motor vehicles And with a car or truck You can use a version which is relatively generic but in this case it'll have the VIN number the identification number of the vehicle That way you know that the bill of is transferring a particular vehicle not just any vehicle So there's a generic version Some states have their own version Like here's an example from Washington state This is an official Washington state DMV Department of licensing bill of sale And you can use this form for transfers in that state Sometimes the state requires you use their particular form because it has other information on it such as mileage odometer readings So each state may have version of their bill of sale and you can get these from our website There's also a bill of sale used by the coast guard for vessels and for Marine equipment And this is their form
And this is something you might want to use if you're buying and selling a vessel or other Marine equipment Again every situation is different A bill of sale is a very important part of a transfer process Remember you may need other forms You may actually need a title or registration signed by the seller In addition to the bill of sale But this is an example of what a bill of sale looks like In most cases the language is the same It says I sell this to you for this much money Here's the description There's just different versions of that simple language for more information check out the website and there's a bunch of forms there you can download