The car already paid 7% TAVT when you bought it. Put your husband or wife on the title and Georgia charges another 0.5% of its value. We checked every state and DC. No other state charges a percentage tax for this.
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TAVT replaced sales tax and the annual car tax in 2013. Owners pay it once, at 7%, when they title the car. Adding a spouse doesn't change who drives it, where it's garaged, or which household owns it. Charging again taxes the same car in the same family twice.
Florida's revenue rule says adding a spouse isn't taxable. North Carolina exempts co-owners and spouses on form MVR-613. South Carolina and Tennessee charge nothing either, and Alabama appears not to. Georgia is the outlier in its own region.
NC's 2001 House Bill 289 proposed exempting a transfer "to the same owner and the owner's spouse." The fiscal note said the revenue loss would be nominal, because married couples simply skip retitling to avoid the tax.
When a title shows only one spouse, the other can run into trouble selling the car, insuring it, or inheriting it. A tax on fixing the title pushes families to leave it wrong.
Amend O.C.G.A. § 48-5C-1 to exempt from TAVT the addition of a spouse to an existing Georgia title when the current owner remains on the title and the vehicle has already paid TAVT.