Tax, title and plates in Illinois
What a private sale costs after the asking price, worked out from the tables Illinois publishes. Free, and every figure links to the government page it came from and the day we last read it.
How Illinois charges it
A private sale here passes two agencies on two clocks. The Secretary of State handles the title and the plates. The Department of Revenue handles the private party vehicle use tax, on Form RUT-50, as a separate filing and a separate payment.
That tax is a flat dollar amount from a published table, not a percentage of the price. Below $15,000 the table reads the age of the car. At $15,000 and above it reads the price instead, and the two tables meet in a step rather than a slope.
The City of Chicago and Cook County each charge their own amount on top of the state figure, and both follow the address on the title application rather than where the car is parked. Between a Chicago address and a DuPage one that is up to $305 on the same car, which is why the address is asked for below and why no total appears until it is answered.
Plates in Illinois are registered to the person, not to the vehicle, so the seller keeps theirs. A buyer either buys a set or moves plates they already hold, and those are two different published prices.
No figure for Illinois
An asking price is needed before anything can be worked out.
The state publishes it here: Illinois Secretary of State, apply for a title and registration.
The rest of the Illinois paperwork
The deadlines, the notary answer, the forms and which of them the state publishes blank are all on the Chicago page, sourced the same way.