Mississippi caps the dealer documentation fee at $425 where the dealer is a franchised new-vehicle dealer (the Motor Vehicle Commission licenses franchised dealers only; an independent used-vehicle dealer is not bound) (30 Miss. Code R. §1301-8.1 (Mississippi Motor Vehicle Commission Regulation 8, amended 21 January 2017; authority Miss. Code §63-17-69): a Commission-licensed dealer's document/service fee may not exceed $425 — the Commission licenses FRANCHISED new-vehicle dealers only (§63-17-55)); no state maximum applies otherwise. Ask which kind of dealer you are buying from before treating the cap as binding.
Doc-fee rule: State-capped
The rule
Standing
State-capped
Statutory maximum
$425 — only where the dealer is a franchised new-vehicle dealer (the Motor Vehicle Commission licenses franchised dealers only; an independent used-vehicle dealer is not bound); no state maximum otherwise
Statute
30 Miss. Code R. §1301-8.1 (Mississippi Motor Vehicle Commission Regulation 8, amended 21 January 2017; authority Miss. Code §63-17-69): a Commission-licensed dealer's document/service fee may not exceed $425 — the Commission licenses FRANCHISED new-vehicle dealers only (§63-17-55) · statute text
Disclosure
The fee must be disclosed to the buyer.
Verification
Checked against the statute text; our last review was 2026-09-14. Statutes change — confirm with the state before you rely on it.
5% (state 5% + average local 0%)state rate verified against a primary source; local average verified against a primary source · source
Trade-in tax credit
yes — a trade-in reduces the taxable amountverify with the state
State table checked 2026-07-14
Mississippi law caps the documentation fee at $425 where the dealer is a franchised new-vehicle dealer (the Motor Vehicle Commission licenses franchised dealers only; an independent used-vehicle dealer is not bound); no state maximum applies otherwise. Which applies is a fact about the dealer, not the deal — ask which kind you are buying from before treating the cap as binding. It is a ceiling for that class, not a going rate — this table holds no data on what dealers actually charge.
Reading this page
Legal and expensive are two different questions.
The documentation fee is the dealership’s charge for preparing the paperwork. It sits next to the government fees on the buyer’s order and is easily mistaken for one. It is not: it is dealer revenue, not a tax. Where the state sets a cap, a fee above it is a question for the dealer and the statute. Where the state sets none, the fee can be entirely legal and still worth negotiating. This page answers only the first question; your report answers the second against your actual quote.
Where the rule is unverified
When a jurisdiction’s rule on file rests on a secondary source or an internal estimate, this page says so and points you at the state agency instead of asserting a figure. That is the same posture the report takes: a cap is never fabricated, and neither is its absence.
What Carlarity checks
Your quoted documentation fee against this rule — and, where a verified cap exists, whether the quote exceeds it.
Title, registration and sales tax on your deal, computed from the same state table shown here.
Every dealer add-on on the order, classified and benchmarked, with the government and lender lines kept out of the negotiable total by construction.
The out-the-door price, so the doc fee is judged as part of the whole and not as a line on its own.
Nearby states
Doc-fee rules stop at the state line, and a dealership an hour away may be operating under a different one. Mississippi borders:
Figures come from Carlarity’s documentation-fee regulation table and state tax table; each shows the date we last reviewed it, and statutes change after we look. Nothing on this page is legal advice. Verify with the state agency before relying on a cap, and check the quoted fee against your own buyer’s order.
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