Georgia TAVT Calculator

How much is tax, title and license (TTL) in Georgia?

On a $25,000 car, tax, title and license in Georgia is about $1,788: $38 in fees and $1,750 in tax. The fixed fees stay about the same at any price; the tax is what moves with what you pay.

Use the full Georgia calculator to enter your own price, trade-in and vehicle details. The table below shows the total at common prices.

Tax, title and license in Georgia by price

Used vehicle, first registration in Georgia, at the state tax rate.

Where the money goes

On a $25,000 car in Georgia, tax is $1,750 of the $1,788 total and the fixed fees are $38. The tax scales with the price of the car. The fees do not, which is why tax, title and license is a much bigger number on an expensive car and barely noticeable on a cheap one.

Sales tax on a car in Georgia

Georgia does not call it a sales tax; it charges the Title Ad Valorem Tax, which is the figure people mean by Georgia car sales tax. The rate is 7%. source 2 It is the biggest part of the bill on an expensive car, and the calculator above works it into your total. How a trade-in changes it is covered in trade-ins below, and every state's rate is on the car sales tax by state page.

How Georgia's TAVT works: 7%, 3% or 0.5%

TAVT, the Title Ad Valorem Tax, replaced both the sales tax and the yearly car tax for vehicles bought on or after March 1, 2013. It is charged once, every time a car changes owner or a new resident titles it here, and the rate depends on the situation:

The tax is worked out on the car's fair market value. For a used car that is the value in the state's motor vehicle assessment manual, an average of wholesale and retail, not what you paid, which matters on a cheap private sale: buy a car for $5,000 that the manual values at $9,000 and you pay TAVT on $9,000. For a new car it is the higher of the selling price or the manual value, and the selling price includes delivery, freight and doc fees. A trade-in comes off the value only when a dealer makes the sale, and on a new car so do the dealer's rebates and cash discounts.

Pay on time. TAVT is due when you apply for the title, within 30 days of the sale. After day 30 the penalty is 5% of the tax plus 5% more each month on a dealer sale, or 10% plus 1% a month on a private sale, and a late title application adds $10.

For the family rate, Form MV-16 counts a spouse, parent, child or step-child, sibling, grandparent or grandchild. If the car is old enough to still be in the pre-2013 annual tax system, the family member can stay in that system instead. Non-resident military members stationed here claim their exemption on Form PT-472NS. Law enforcement officers, firefighters and publicly employed EMTs receiving state indemnification for a line-of-duty death or disability, or their surviving spouses, are exempt on up to $50,000 of value across the vehicles they register in any three years. Vehicles with no title, such as many trailers, pay the annual ad valorem tax instead of TAVT.

Does a trade-in reduce your tax in Georgia?

Yes. Georgia subtracts the trade-in allowance from the price before the tax is worked out. The bigger the trade-in, the smaller the tax bill.

Buy a $28,000 car and hand over a trade-in worth $8,000 and you are taxed on $20,000, not $28,000. That is $560 you do not pay.

One catch, and in Georgia it is a firm rule rather than a habit. The reduction is only allowed when a dealer makes the sale. Buy privately and the trade-in counts for nothing, however the two of you write it up.

Buying from a dealer? Put the doc fee and any add-ons on top of these figures with the out-the-door price calculator, set to Georgia.

The Georgia documentation fee, and what else is not TTL

Once you strip out the tax, title and registration, what is left on the sheet is the dealer's, and the biggest of those is usually the documentation fee.

The fee is legal and uncapped, but Georgia makes the dealer build it into the advertised price, so the number you see should already include it. Only tax, title, tag and Lemon Law fees may sit outside that price. A dealer that advertises a car and then adds the fee on top is breaking the state's advertising law, which the Attorney General enforces. source 5

No state makes a dealer charge this, and Georgia puts no ceiling on it, so of everything on the sheet it is the line with the most room to push back on.

For the full list of what belongs to the state and what belongs to the dealer, see what dealers add that is not tax, title and license, and how Georgia's doc fee rule compares with the rest.

Motorcycles, leases and other cases

Three situations where the figure above does not apply:

• Motorcycles. Georgia DOR registers them on a different and much cheaper schedule. The tax works the same way, on the purchase price.
• Leases. A lease is not a purchase, and several states tax the monthly payment rather than the value of the car. If you are leasing, the number on this page is not your number.
• Gifts and family transfers. No sale means no sales tax in most states, though the title fee still applies. The Georgia title transfer page has the rule and the form.

Questions about Georgia TTL

Work out the rest of the Georgia bill

The generic explainers, on what tax, title and license means, how to check a dealer's quote, and whether to finance the tax, live on the tax, title and license hub. For Georgia specifically, these are the pages worth having open:

How Georgia compares at one price

The table above runs Georgia at prices from $3,000 to $40,000. To see the same bill in every state side by side, there is tax, title and license on a $30,000 car, state by state.

Nearby states

Or compare all 51 on the tax, title and license by state page.

Where these numbers come from