The Expert Podcast

If you're selling any type of item or even a purchaser of an item, many times a document is required called a bill of sale. 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. 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. It will have PDF files of many types of bill of sale documents that you can download, along with some assistance on filling these in. Remember, we're not attorneys and we're not giving 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 we'll 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 at a flea market, and you want to have a firm receipt showing that you purchased this item. It may help you for taxes, prove ownership for insurance, and sometimes you just want to have this to show that you bought it to make sure that you know 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, a description of the item, and then usually some type of recital that the seller is transferring this ownership to you for this amount of money.

This is a generic example of a bill of sale. Bill of sales are most often associated with motor vehicles, and with a car or truck, you can use a version that is relatively generic. In this case, it'll have the VIN number, the identification number of the vehicle, that way you know that the bill of sale 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 to use their particular form because it has other information on it, such as mileage or odometer readings. So, each state may have a version of their bill of sale. 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. 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: "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 are a bunch of forms there that you can download.