Selling a junk car in Reading

How Reading's excise bill works

The excise is a local tax in Massachusetts. Reading's assessors issue it and rule on abatements. Three rules decide what a seller ends up paying:

• It follows the registration. Whether the engine turns over makes no difference.
• Part-year cars pay from their first month. Register a car in some month, and Reading bills that month plus every remaining month of the year.
• Refund requests have a window. File with Reading's board of assessors inside 3 years of the due date, or inside 1 year after paying, whichever ends later.

Insurance lapses make this worse. A registration revoked for one keeps owing excise until someone cancels it, and putting that car back on the road later starts with a reinstatement fee.

Reading's rules on stored cars

We did not find Reading's bylaws when we searched online. This section is Massachusetts law alone, and Reading may add rules of its own for cars parked on a lot; the town can say. State law here is narrow. 72 hours is the trigger in Reading. Then Chapter 90, section 22C applies in Reading to a car that looks abandoned, whether on a public road, a private road, or land where it was not welcome. A street officer may then remove it. The catch is the car must be worth less than towing and scrapping it. For a tow off private land, Massachusetts directs people to their local police.

The title, in four steps

1. Write the odometer reading on the title.
2. Selling in Reading, you sign the transfer area, print your name there and date it. Your buyer fills in the same three things.
3. Room for a price on the title? Fill it in. No room? The buyer's application then needs a bill of sale that shows it.
4. Hand the title over.

No notary appears on the RMV's version of this list. The buyer takes it from there: 10 days to title the car, and the $75 title fee.

Plates come off in Reading

After the car leaves Reading, cancel its registration through MyMassGov. Save the receipt, and get a copy to your insurer. Rather than returning the plates, you recycle them or cut each one through. An adult seller buying another car can transfer them across, with a grace period of 7 calendar days from the day the old car goes.

Getting an offer

Ring (877) 421-6008 or use the form. For a Reading car, the quickest start is our offer form or a call. Pickup is free anywhere in the US, so the driver comes to you, on a Reading side street or in a garage. Wakefield has a page 3.0 miles away and Woburn is 4.1; the full state rules are on Massachusetts.