New Hampshire vehicle taxes & fees

In short

Zero sales tax, and the border traffic it does not actually help

The rate is $0 on dealer sales, private sales and gifts alike. There is no reduced family gift rate because the standard rate is already nothing, no gift affidavit to notarize, and no trade-in credit form, since no taxable base exists for a trade to reduce. Massachusetts at 6.25%, Vermont at 6% and Maine at 5.5% make a drive to Salem or Nashua look worthwhile, but use tax follows the registration address rather than the purchase location. A Massachusetts resident who buys in Nashua and plates the car at home still pays Massachusetts; dealers report the sale and the RMV checks it against the registration address. Boats, motorcycles and trailers are covered by the same nothing.

The permit fee is billed on MSRP forever, not on what you paid

RSA 261:153 fixes the base to the manufacturer's original list price, pulled from a state valuation schedule keyed to make, model, trim and year. Negotiating hard on a new truck does not move it, and a collapsing resale value does not move it either. The rate steps down every 12 months from 18 mills to 15, 12, 9 and 6, then holds at 3 mills with a $5 statutory minimum for as long as the vehicle exists. A car that listed at $30,000 owes the town $540 in its current model year, $450 at one year old, $360 at two, $270 at three, $180 at four, and $90 every year from five onward. Towns have no authority to discount any of it.

The state half jumped on January 1, 2026

RSA 261:141's weight schedule rose 20% to 100% across the brackets at the start of 2026 to shore up the Highway Fund. A passenger car up to 3,000 pounds now pays $42 a year, a midsize SUV or pickup up to 5,000 pounds pays $48, a full-size truck up to 8,000 pounds pays $66, and anything heavier is charged $1.06 per 100 pounds of gross weight. Motorcycles doubled from $15 to $30 and mopeds went from $3 to $14. RSA 261:141-c landed on the same date, adding $100 a year for a fully electric vehicle and $50 for a plug-in hybrid, stacked on top of both the state weight fee and the town's mill-rate fee.

Plates belong to the person, so a gifted car still pays full registration

A New Hampshire plate stays with its owner, not the vehicle. The seller or giver pulls the plates before handing over the keys, keeping them for another vehicle or surrendering them, and the new owner registers from scratch: the full mill-rate permit fee at the vehicle's current age, the full state weight fee, and $8 for a new set of plates unless they are moving plates they already hold. That is why gifting a car to a child here produces the same bill a stranger's purchase would, a $37 title plus a complete new registration, while states with a family gift rate produce almost nothing. Adding a co-owner to an existing registration is the only way to avoid restarting.

Twenty days to title, birth-month renewals, and a penalty that doubles the fee

RSA 261:66 allows 20 days from the purchase date to file title application TDMV 23, a form the DMV issues only over the counter at a town or city clerk's office and never publishes for download. File it late and RSA 261:20 charges a penalty equal to the fee itself, so $37 becomes $74. It is a flat doubling with no sliding scale, no matter how many months have passed. Registration runs on the first-listed owner's birth month and expires on that month's last day, with no grace period in the statute. Vehicles of model year 1999 or older are exempt from titling altogether, other than trucks with three or more axles and truck tractors over 18,000 pounds GVW. The mandatory annual inspection has been suspended since February 13, 2026 during federal litigation over the 2025 repeal law.