Where Can I Register My Car Out Of State If I Own It Outright?

How to Legally Register Your Car Out of State with a Montana LLC

We get a lot of questions about how to do this or that here at Dirt Legal. And frankly, we understand the confusion completely. What we do here sometimes doesn’t make complete sense, or is just otherwise kind of hard to decipher. Thanks to our hard-working team, we have an excellent matrix for you to understand exactly what kind of options you have. One of the biggest overall differentiating factors that sways the options available to most buyers is whether or not their vehicle has a lien on it. 

This might not seem like that big of a deal, but the way you own the vehicle (i.e., with a loan or owned outright) changes the options available to you. Today, we’re talking about how you can register your car out-of-state if you own it outright or are buying a vehicle outright with cash and will hold the title immediately with no lien. 

Why Consider Out-of-State Registration?

But first, why would you want to register your vehicle out of state? Isn’t that why every state has a perfectly good DMV already in place? Hypothetically yes. But the answer is actually a lot deeper than this. 

See, the DMV is really a conduit for enforcing the taxes and fees that each individual state levies on their citizens. If you live in a state with high state sales tax, then the DMV is the agent responsible for collecting these fees. One of the biggest and most common reasons for customers opting for an out-of-state registration option is to save on sales taxes. 

The national average sales tax rate is roughly seven percent nationwide, and the average transaction price of a new vehicle remains above $48,000. That means the average consumer is shelling out around $3,360 in sales tax. Remember, that’s just the average. There are lots of vehicles that are routinely in the $80,000 MSRP and up range, and these aren’t even exotic cars or sports cars.  The average MSRP for a 2024 F-250 is just a shade below $65,000 and this is the average; some trims will be a lot higher. 

For that dead-average ¾-ton pickup, the average sales tax bill sits at $4,550. And this is just part of the equation. Assume you live in a state with even higher sales taxes and you have to deal with emissions standards. This can be a real nightmare to be honest. Yeah, for the first couple of years you have a grace period if it is brand new (for instance, California does not require smog checks if it is less than eight model years old for gasoline-powered vehicles). 

Common Reasons for Out-of-State Vehicle Registration

We’ve already touched on two of the most common reasons (sales taxes and smog checks), but there is one more reason that comes up often: title recovery. 

Title recovery is exactly what it sounds like: it’s how you can get a title when one is missing or there is a problem with it. For instance, you find a vehicle on Marketplace or Craigslist that you love and it is a great deal. The problem is that it doesn’t have a title and the seller isn’t interested in acquiring one. This does happen fairly often, and quite frankly, the very first thing you ought to do is get yourself a VIN check. It is not the same as a VIN inspection, which is administered by law enforcement agents to make sure the VIN isn’t linked to a stolen or missing vehicle. But our VIN checks reveal all kinds of irregularities so you know exactly what you are getting into before you ever purchase the vehicle. 

Make sure to check out how Dirt Legal’s VIN check saved me from buying a lemon (true story). 

Montana LLC Vehicle Registration: The Best Out-of-State Solution

The best solution is through Montana, and it isn’t even close. The other state that works well is South Dakota but there is one major fly in the ointment with SoDak: residence. Granted, it is also that unlike Montana’s 0% sales tax rate, South Dakota is 4%. Not a deal breaker, but it definitely adds up especially for high-ticket vehicles (think motorhomes, supercars, etc.). 

But the major deal-breaker with South Dakota is that it never provides proof of residency in the state. So, in the event that you ever get pulled over in your home state and they figure out why your plates and your driver’s license don’t match up (even though you rightfully own the vehicle), you might get royally screwed. The state might just decide that you owe them a bunch of money since you were trying to get out of it. 

Admittedly, this mostly happens when guys use a South Dakota registration for a UTV or other OHV in states where that is not allowed. When they see you have no residence in SoDak but instead reside in that state, they may try to put the screws to you (we have seen this in a few cases in states that have been street-legal UTV unfriendly). 

How the Montana LLC Works

South Dakota (and previously Vermont) is totally friendly towards out-of-state registrations; they will gladly take your money and put it into their state. But the problem is that since they have no residency requirements, your registration says exactly that: John Doe, XXXXX Address, and whatever your home state is. 

Well, almost every single state requires you to register your cars in that state within a few weeks of moving there and they will expect the exact same thing for getting an out-of-state registration. So why get a registration that will only be good for like six weeks? That doesn’t jive, really. 

Montana, on the other hand, requires that you have a residence in the state. But they do not require it to be a permanent residence, also known as your domicile. So, in the case of Montana, an LLC is all you need to establish residency in the state for the sake of titling and registering vehicles there. 

It sounds simple enough, and in theory it is not hard to comprehend. But the difference between theory and practice can be staggering, so we handle it all for you in-house. 

LLC formation? ✅

Dealing with the DMV so you don’t have to?✅✅

Saving a whole bunch of money? ✅✅✅

How to Get Started with Dirt Legal Today

Dirt Legal’s entire goal in life is to save you money and make the titling and registration process a lot easier. Why should it be hard? It’s almost 2025! Basically all paperwork is automated and digital with the exception of a lot of government departments. 

Is this a feature or a bug? We may never know. 

Whichever one it is, you never have to worry about it. We walk you through every step of the process from clicking the buy button until you get your title and tag in the mail. And again, and we cannot stress this enough, but if you hold your title outright or are buying a vehicle with cash, from passenger cars and light trucks to boats and motorhomes, our Montana LLC registration is your best choice by a mile.