Salvage Title Thresholds by State, and Why They Do Not Compare

Short answer: a salvage-title percentage on its own is not a rule. It is the last step of one, and the steps before it are where the states actually differ. So a published table of those percentages cannot be true as printed. Two states can both print 70 percent while asking different questions, of different people, about different money.

By Anthony Braswell for Quorum Industries LLC, The Autobody Directory · Updated 2026-09-03 · How this was written, and what the machine may not do

How this page was produced: Researched, drafted and checked with AI assistance under human direction, and signed off by the named author. How this site is written

Every statute, regulation and rule quoted on this page was read in full, on the issuing state's own official source, by us. Where we could not reach an official source we say so on the spot. Sections verified this way are marked. The states quoted at length below are our deepest readings, read on 2026-08-06 and 2026-08-07; since then we have read the salvage or total-loss boundary of all fifty states and the District of Columbia first-party on each government's own source, each read on 2026-08-12, and we hold the exact quote and citation for every one.

This guide sits one layer below Will My Car Get a Salvage Title?, which explains the more basic split, your insurer writing the car off and your state branding the title are two different decisions. Start there if that distinction is new. This page is about something narrower and less well known: even once you are looking at the right decision, the state numbers do not mean the same thing.

What this page will show you

It is a long page because the subject is genuinely intricate. Here is the route, so you can stop wherever you have what you need:

• Why the famous 75 percent figure is not a national rule, where it actually comes from, and why no federal law sets it.
• Why two states that both say 70 percent are not equivalent, Iowa against Arkansas, worked through in full.
• Why some states have no percentage at all, and one that forbids using one.
• How age caps and value floors decide more real cases than the percentage does, including how an older car can be paid as a total loss and still take a different title path.
• Why the number printed in a statute may not be the number in force, Washington renumbered a subsection in June 2026, and a citation that looks right can point at the wrong text.
• Why a brand from an old rule can outlive the rule itself; Iowa titles still carry a "damage over 50 percent" designation under a 70 percent regime.

If you only want to know whether your own car is likely to be branded, read Will My Car Get a Salvage Title? instead. This page is the research behind it.

The short answer

A salvage-title threshold has at least six moving parts, and the percentage is one of them:

1. Which register it decides. Salvage title, junk or non-rebuildable, damage disclosure, and insurer total loss are four different decisions with four different consequences. States use overlapping words for all four.
2. Who it binds. The owner, the insurer, a self-insurer, a later buyer, a dismantler, or the repair shop. The same number can carry a different duty for each.
3. What goes in the numerator. Repair cost, and states disagree about what counts as repair cost.
4. What goes in the denominator, and who picks it. Fair retail value, fair market value, and average retail value are three different figures, chosen by three different people.
5. What is exempted before you ever get to the arithmetic. Age caps and value floors decide more real cases than the percentage does.
6. Whether a percentage is involved at all. Several states brand on a physical fact, or on nothing but an insurer's say-so.

Get any one of those wrong and the number is worthless. Most published tables get four of them wrong at once, because they only ever recorded the number.

Same number, different question

Iowa and Arkansas both use 70 percent. Put them side by side in a table and they look identical. They are not comparable.

Iowa. 761 IAC 405.2(1) defines a wrecked or salvage vehicle as one that:

"1. Has repair costs exceeding 70 percent of its fair market value before it became damaged, and

2. Had a fair market value of $500 or more before it became damaged."

Two prongs joined by and. And the denominator is not left to the parties: 405.2(2) says fair market value "is to be determined by the motor vehicle division", using a bill of sale, a dealer or third-party appraisal, or a commercially available pricing guide. The agency decides.

Arkansas. 27 CAR section 14-101(14) defines a salvage vehicle as one that:

"(A) Is water-damaged as defined in this part; or (B) Sustains any other damage in an amount equal to or exceeding seventy percent (70%) of its average retail value, as listed in the most current issue of any pricing guide approved by the Secretary..."

Different denominator: average retail value, not fair market value. Different decider: a guide from an approval list, not an agency determination. Different structure: Arkansas reaches the percentage only if the water test has not already caught the car.

So "70 percent" in Iowa is 70 percent of an agency-determined fair market value with a $500 floor underneath it. "70 percent" in Arkansas is 70 percent of an average retail book figure, on a car that is not already water-branded and is not too old to qualify. The two states are not applying the same test and never were.

Alabama makes a third choice again. Ala. Code section 32-8-87(d)(1) measures damage against "the fair retail value of the vehicle prior to damage as set forth in a current edition of a nationally recognized compilation of retail values, including automated databases." Those three states, three denominators, three deciders.

Some states have no percentage at all

This is the part that breaks tables hardest, because a blank cell gets filled in by whoever is building the table.

Washington has no percentage. RCW 46.04.514 defines a salvage vehicle partly as one damaged to the extent that the owner, an insurer, or another person acting for the owner "has determined that the cost of parts and labor plus the salvage value has made it uneconomical to repair the vehicle."

Read that carefully. It states a sum: parts, plus labour, plus salvage value, and it states who decides. It never states what that sum is compared against. There is no comparator, no denominator, and therefore no ratio. There is nothing in Washington law to express as a percentage, and any table that prints one for Washington has invented it.

South Dakota has no percentage either. SDCL 32-3-51.19 makes the whole test a determination:

"the term, salvage vehicle, means any motor vehicle that an insurer or self insurer determines a total loss due to theft or to damage caused by fire, vandalism, collision, weather, submersion in water, or flood."

An insurer decides, and that is the test. There is no ratio to check the insurer against. Note also that South Dakota's list of causes is closed (there is no "including, without limitation" in it), while Arkansas's equivalent list at 27 CAR section 14-101(6) expressly is open-ended. Two states with near-identical cause lists and opposite legal effect.

Some states brand on a physical fact, with no money in it

A percentage-keyed table has nowhere to put these, so they get dropped.

Arkansas brands on a water line. 27 CAR section 14-101(15) defines water damage as submersion or partial submersion "at any water level above the dashboard of the vehicle, regardless of the actual dollar amount of the damage." A bright line drawn on the car itself. Cost is irrelevant by the express words of the rule.

Alabama brands on a missing engine. Ala. Code section 32-8-87(b)(1)a gives two independent triggers:

"When the frame or engine is removed from a motor vehicle and not immediately replaced by another frame or engine, or when an insurance company has paid money or made other monetary settlement as compensation for a total loss of any motor vehicle, the motor vehicle shall be considered to be salvage."

The first limb has no percentage, no insurer, no settlement and no valuation in it. Pull the engine and leave it out, and the car is salvage by operation of statute.

Alabama and Arkansas therefore sit on the money axis and the physical axis at the same time. Filing either of them under a single percentage misstates the law.

The number in the statute is sometimes not the answer

Washington is the clean example, and it is the reason we could not publish this state for some time, two careful readings of secondary sources put the figure on opposite sides.

RCW 46.12.600(5) says:

"The market value threshold is $6,790 or a greater amount as set by rule of the department."

That is a floor with an escalator attached, not a current figure. The same subsection ties increases to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index for urban consumers, west region, in the expenditure category "used cars and trucks", effective on 1 July of the year after an annual average increase, rounded to the nearest $10, skipped entirely if the increase would be under $50, with unmade increases carried forward until they total $50.

The operative number lives in the regulation. WAC 308-56A-460(3): "The current market value threshold amount is $11,780." Adopted by WSR 23-16-052, effective 26 August 2023, replacing $10,430.

Neither figure is wrong and they are not in conflict. The regulation is supposed to differ from the statute, the statute told it to. This matters as a method point far beyond Washington: an audit that flags a state because its regulation carries a different number than its statute will produce a false positive on every state built this way. The question is not whether the numbers differ. It is whether the statute delegated the number.

There is a trap for anyone checking our work, too. Washington renumbered this subsection on 11 June 2026. HB 2604 (2026 c 101) inserted a new subsection (3) and pushed the market-value-threshold provision from (4) to (5) without changing a word of its substance. Every source that cites "RCW 46.12.600(4)" for the threshold is citing a subsection that has moved.

The exemptions decide more cases than the percentage

If your car is more than a few years old, the percentage may never be reached at all, and in at least one state the rule says out loud what that means.

Arkansas: seven model years, and the rule shows its working. 27 CAR section 14-101(5)(B) excludes from the definition of "motor vehicle" any vehicle "more than seven (7) model years old prior to the year of occurrence", and then adds, unusually helpfully: "Subtracting eight (8) from the current calendar year will determine the latest model year excluded." Motorcycles, motor-driven cycles and trucks of 10,000 lb or more unladen weight are excluded outright.

Then section 14-108(a) states the consequence plainly. An insurer that takes a vehicle in settlement, where the vehicle "has not sustained sufficient damage to require the issuance of a salvage title or is excluded from the definition of motor vehicle by virtue of its age", may simply reassign the existing certificate of title and is not required to apply for a title in its own name.

In other words: an eight-year-old Arkansas car can be wrecked, totalled, paid out and resold on a clean, unbranded title, by the express terms of the rule. That is the drafted result.

Washington: a three-band age gate. Under RCW 46.04.514, a vehicle under six model years old is always in scope; one between six and twenty is in scope only if its retail fair market value immediately before the damage was at least the market value threshold ($11,780); and one more than twenty model years old is never in scope.

Washington also resolves the ambiguity against the car. WAC 308-56A-460(5): if the required market-value statement is not supplied, "the department would treat the report of destruction as if the market value threshold ... has been met," and the title is branded. Silence brands the car.

South Dakota: ten model years and 16,000 lb. SDCL 32-3-51.19 does not apply to any vehicle more than ten model years old or with a gross vehicle weight rating over 16,000 lb. The same twin exclusions are restated in 32-3-51.21.

Iowa: a $500 floor. As above, a car worth under $500 before the damage is outside the definition no matter how badly it is hit.

For a large share of the cars that actually get wrecked in America, the exemption is the rule and the percentage never comes up.

The numerator is not settled either

Even where two states agree on the percentage and the denominator, they can disagree about what counts as damage.

Alabama legislates the exclusions directly. Ala. Code section 32-8-87(d)(2):

"The compensation for total loss ... shall not include payments by an insurer or other person for medical care, bodily injury, vehicle rental, or for anything other than the amount paid for the actual damage to the motor vehicle. A vehicle that has sustained minor damage as a result of theft or vandalism shall not be considered a total loss."

Other states draw the line elsewhere. Pennsylvania's rule includes sales tax, towing and storage in the figure; Maryland excludes towing, storage and rental; Kansas excludes tires, sound equipment and sales tax; Texas excludes sales tax; Utah excludes cosmetic labour time. Those five are recorded in our dataset from an earlier research pass and are marked there as screened rather than read by us directly, we flag that distinction.

The consequence is worth stating plainly: the same car, with the same damage, can cross 75 percent in one state and not in another before any percentage is compared. The threshold is the visible part of a calculation whose inputs were already different.

Alabama also reaches further than most in one respect. Its trigger runs on payment by "an insurance company or any other person"; it is not confined to insurers.

A brand can outlive the rule that made it

Iowa moved its threshold from 50 percent to 70 percent on 1 July 2021. The old designation did not disappear.

761 IAC 405.7(1)(c) preserves a "damage over 50 percent" designation for transfers and title issuances occurring before that date, and 405.7(1) carries every designation forward onto all later Iowa titles. So an Iowa title in circulation today can read "damage over 50 percent" while Iowa's actual rule is 70 percent.

If you are building a comparison from title brands, Iowa will mislead you. Read the rule.

Iowa also keeps three registers deliberately separate, and they are easy to blur:

• Salvage title: 405.2(1), the 70 percent and $500 test.
• Damage disclosure: 405.7(1)(d), under Iowa Code 321.69. Same 70 percent, but it attaches when "the seller or the buyer indicates on the damage disclosure statement that the person has knowledge" of repair cost over 70 percent. Private knowledge on a form, not an insurer's determination.
• Junking: 405.5(1), which is terminal: a junked vehicle is "prohibited from ever again being driven upon a highway."

One number, three registers, three different triggering actors.

Terminal brands: the decisions that cannot be undone

Most coverage treats salvage as the worst outcome. It is not. Several states have a register below it from which no vehicle returns.

• Alabama. On the salvage application the applicant must disclose whether the vehicle is "Junk" or "Sold For Parts Only." Once disclosed, Rule 810-5-75-.57 provides the vehicle "cannot be rebuilt and no subsequent certificate of title will be issued," and the title carries the legend "Parts Only - Non-Rebuildable." Alabama also refuses to title any vehicle branded junk, parts car, parts only or non-rebuildable anywhere else (section 32-8-87(j)(3)), and refuses a title where "the frame or the majority of the major component parts were obtained from a junk vehicle" (section 32-8-87(j)(4)).
• Arkansas. A "PARTS ONLY" title bears "Not for Registration" on its face, and a vehicle covered by an out-of-state junking certificate "shall not be registered in the State of Arkansas."
• Iowa. Junked means never again on a highway.
• Michigan, and it is the only one on this list you reach by arithmetic. Everywhere else the terminal register is entered by a disclosure or a category. Michigan enters it at a percentage one point above the salvage band: 75 to under 91 is salvage, and 91 or more is a scrap certificate, after which MCL 257.217c(7) says "A certificate of title must not again be issued for this vehicle." Our own row below records Michigan as a bare 75, which is correct and hides the number that actually ends the car. Michigan Brands Your Car at 75 Percent and Kills It at 91 unpacks that row, including the one consequence nobody records: the former owner is the first permitted buyer of a salvage vehicle and is absent from the scrap list entirely.

And some brands are permanent as well as terminal. Alabama section 32-8-87(q)(1): once a flood designation issues, it "shall contain the designation" on the certificate of title and every subsequent certificate of title, and Rule 810-5-75-.57(4) confirms it follows the car "regardless of whether the vehicle is subsequently rebuilt in this or any other state."

States disagree about whether their law follows the car or the crash

This is a genuine conflict of laws sitting inside routine paperwork, and we have not seen it flagged anywhere.

Alabama disclaims reach. Rule 810-5-75-.57(1) states that "the salvage or total loss must occur in Alabama for an Alabama salvage certificate of title to be issued. If the salvage or total loss occurs in another state or other jurisdiction then the salvage laws of that state of other jurisdiction will apply."

Washington asserts it. RCW 46.12.600(2) requires the insurer's report to be submitted "regardless of where or in what jurisdiction the total loss occurred."

Wreck the same car on the same trip and the answer depends on which state you are asking. Worth knowing if you are buying a car that was damaged out of state.

One caveat we owe you, because we found it while checking: Alabama's statute does not actually say what its regulation says it says. Section 32-8-87(b)(1)b attaches the owner's duty where the vehicle has a current Alabama title, or is located in Alabama at the time of title application or branding, or the owner is an Alabama resident. Those are residence and location hooks. Place of loss is not among them. The rule asserts a limit its parent statute does not contain and cites that statute for it. We are recording that, not resolving it; it is a question for a lawyer, not for a directory.

What a rebuilt inspection does not certify

If you are buying a rebuilt-titled car, this is probably the single most useful sentence on this page. It is Alabama's, but the pattern is common.

Ala. Code section 32-8-87(l)(2) describes the state inspection of a restored vehicle: it examines the vehicle and its parts to confirm the identification numbers have not been "removed, falsified, altered, defaced, destroyed, or tampered with", that the application is accurate, and "that there are no indications that the vehicle or any of its parts are stolen." Then:

"The certification shall not attest to the roadworthiness or safety condition of the vehicle."

The state's rebuilt inspection is an anti-theft check, and the statute says so in terms. It is not a safety inspection. A rebuilt title means somebody proved the parts were not stolen. It does not mean anyone certified the car is safe.

One state goes the other way, and it is worth knowing about. Hawaii's rebuilt inspection is not only an anti-theft check. HRS 286-48 requires, before a rebuilt salvage vehicle may be titled and returned to the road, a certificate of inspection signed by the bonded repair dealer who rebuilt it attesting that "the original recognized vehicle manufacturer's established repair procedures or specifications and allowable tolerances for the particular model and year were utilized and adhered to." That is a state writing the manufacturer's repair procedures into the title code in so many words: the exact question the industry usually argues about, answered by statute, for rebuilt cars, in one state.

That is why a rebuilt car is worth having inspected by a shop you chose yourself, and why the shop's structural and calibration capability matters more on a rebuilt car than on any other kind.

What falls on the repair shop

Most of this body of law addresses owners, insurers and dismantlers. A few provisions address the person doing the work, and shops are frequently unaware of them.

Arkansas puts a signed, itemised disclosure duty on the repairer. 27 CAR section 14-105(a)(1):

"the repairer or rebuilder shall complete and deliver to the owner a signed Affidavit of Reconstruction for a Salvage Vehicle form ... that: (A) Fully discloses the repairs made to the vehicle; and (B) Lists all parts and components that were repaired or replaced."

The owner signs to acknowledge receipt, and the rebuilt title must then be applied for within ten working days. The duty reaches everyone: section 14-101(12) defines repairer or rebuilder as any person, firm or entity doing the work "whether or not the activity is for profit." An unpaid weekend rebuild is inside the rule.

Alabama gates who may rebuild for title. Section 32-8-87(k)(3) requires the applicant for a rebuilt inspection to hold a motor vehicle rebuilder licence under section 40-12-390 unless exempt, with a carve-out where an owner buys his own vehicle back from his own insurer. Section 32-8-87(k)(2) requires notarised bills of sale listing donor VINs for major component parts, and singles out the transmission for that treatment specifically.

Alabama legislates the disclosure's type size. Section 32-8-87(p) requires written disclosure at or before every sale, exchange, donation or transfer, "in no smaller than 10 point type", in words the statute fixes: "This vehicle's title contains the designation salvage or rebuilt."

Indiana legislates what a legitimate yard looks like. 75 IAC 3-1-10.2 requires an automotive salvage recycler's established place of business to have an Indiana address that is not a PO box or mailbox facility and a permanent sign in the licensed name, and, if it sells to the public, customer parking, public access, display space, posted hours, and an office of at least 100 square feet with desk, chairs and filing cabinets, served by electricity, lighting, heat, operational plumbing and a business telephone. Renewal requires a current bond and current liability insurance.

Three points about the last one. It is a verifiable premises standard written into law. It is enforced by the Secretary of State, not the BMV. And it is not a title rule at all, which is exactly why nobody looking for a salvage percentage in Indiana's administrative code will ever find one. There is no percentage in it, because it was never that kind of rule.

One state, four brands, three different thresholds and two different age rules

Wisconsin is the cleanest single demonstration of everything above, because its DMV lists the brands side by side and they do not agree with each other. All four definitions below are the department's own words.

Salvage reaches only newer cars. "A vehicle less than seven years old that is not considered junk and damaged by collision or other occurrence (other than from hail damage) to the extent that the cost of repairing the vehicle is more than 70% of the fair market value."

Flood has no age limit at all. "A vehicle that is not considered junk and damaged by water to the extent that the estimated or actual repair costs, whichever is greater, is more than 70% of the fair market value. A vehicle that has been submerged in water will receive a flood damaged brand. If the vehicle is less than seven years old it will also receive a Wisconsin salvage vehicle brand."

Put those two beside each other and the consequence is stark. A fifteen-year-old car destroyed by water gets branded. A fifteen-year-old car wrecked to ninety percent of its value by a collision does not, because the salvage definition never reaches it. Same state, same title, opposite answers, and the difference is what the water did versus what the impact did.

Claim paid is a third brand at a completely different percentage. "A vehicle less than seven years old damaged by collision or other occurrence to the extent that the estimated or actual cost, whichever is greater, of repairing the vehicle is more than 30% of its fair market value and was transferred to an insurer upon payment of an insurance claim." Thirty percent, not seventy, and it turns on the car having gone to the insurer. Wisconsin adds that it "does not apply to a salvage vehicle that, by definition, has damage more than of 70%" of fair market value. So in one state a collision-damaged car can pass a branding threshold at 30 percent, at 70 percent, or at neither, depending on age and on who ended up owning it.

Hail gets its own rule, and a repair-method test. A vehicle less than seven years old damaged "solely by hail" beyond 70 percent of fair market value is branded hail damaged, and the definition adds that the vehicle "was or may be repaired without replacing any non-mechanical sheet metal or plastic parts of the exterior." If the repair does replace those parts, "the vehicle must receive a salvage vehicle brand." That is a branding outcome decided by how the car is fixed, which is a rule aimed squarely at a body shop.

And the age limit does not survive a border. The salvage definition ends with a second limb: "Or, a vehicle of any model year last titled in another jurisdiction with a salvage brand." So the seven-year cutoff protects a Wisconsin-titled car only. Drive in an out-of-state salvage title on a twenty-year-old vehicle and Wisconsin brands it regardless of age. Anyone reading "Wisconsin does not brand old cars" as a general rule has read one limb of one definition.

Wisconsin also states the permanence plainly: a brand "is a permanent record that prints on each Wisconsin title issued for an individual vehicle", and the owner must disclose brand information when selling, or when applying for a title, if it is not already on the current Wisconsin title.

Every jurisdiction, with its citation

All 51 US jurisdictions, generated from the register that backs this page rather than typed, so the table cannot drift from the data. Every row carries the citation we read and the date we read it. The same rows are machine-readable at /api/salvage-titles.json under CC BY 4.0. Read the columns as three different questions, not one comparable number: the test, the authority that sets it, and how far we have verified it.

Read the percentages with two warnings, and they apply to the whole table.

First, in most of these states an insurer who declares a total loss makes the vehicle salvage on that declaration alone, with no arithmetic at all. Where that is so, the percentage in this table is not the test that decides an ordinary insured claim. It is a ceiling that catches the cases the declaration does not: an uninsured owner, a self-insurer, a repossession, a fleet. That is why 17 of these rows now say in the Test column what their percentage actually governs, rather than stating the number alone.

Second, a percentage often reaches only some vehicles. 11 rows carry an age or value gate, shown in the Test column beside the number, and a vehicle outside that class is outside the rule however badly it is damaged. Until 2026-09-03 this page printed those percentages bare, which overstated their reach. The register had recorded every one of those gates for months; the page simply never rendered them.

How to check your own state without getting it wrong

The mistakes we made and corrected during this research are the same ones everyone makes. In order of how often they bite:

1. Ask which register the provision decides. Before reading a number, find out whether the section is about salvage titling, junk, damage disclosure, or insurer claim handling. A citation can be verbatim correct and answer a different question than the one you asked.
2. Read the definition section, not the section that uses the term. A section that says "major component parts" may be pointing at a definition somewhere else, and the definition may be scoped to a different rule.
3. Check for a scoping clause. South Dakota's salvage definition opens "For purposes of sections 32-3-51.5, 32-3-51.20, and 32-3-51.21"; it does not define the term for the rest of the code.
4. Check the administrative code, not just the statute. For Arkansas the entire operative test (percentage, denominator, age cap, water rule and repairer duty), lives in the regulation. A researcher with statute access alone comes away with nothing usable.
5. Do not read a threshold off a title brand. See Iowa above.
6. Check whether the statute delegated the number. If it says "or a greater amount as set by rule", the statute's figure is a floor and the current answer is elsewhere.
7. Check the subsection numbering against a current copy. Washington's threshold subsection moved in June 2026. Connecticut's moved in 2021. Both produce confident, wrong citations in otherwise careful sources.

What this page is not saying

We are not saying any of these percentages decides your claim. A title-branding threshold binds the titling agency, and in some states an insurer's reporting duty. Whether your insurer declares the car a total loss is a separate decision under your policy, and the two part company often enough that treating them as one number is the single most common mistake made with this subject. Will My Car Get a Salvage Title? is where that split is set out.

We are not saying a state's law is whatever a secondary source prints. Where we could not open a government copy of a text, the row says so at the point of use and keeps the limit.

We are not claiming these readings are permanent. Washington renumbered its threshold subsection in June 2026 and Connecticut moved its in 2021. A citation that was right when it was published can point at the wrong text a year later, which is why every row carries the date it was read rather than the date it was published.

We are not making any claim about a named insurer, shop, adjuster or appraiser. This page reads rules. It records nothing about what any party did, and nothing here is an assessment of anyone's conduct.

How this page was researched

Every quotation above was read on 2026-08-06 or 2026-08-07, in full, on the issuing government's own source:

• Washington: RCW 46.04.514; RCW 46.12.600; WAC 308-56A-460; WAC 308-56A-530; and 2026 c 101 (HB 2604) as enrolled. app.leg.wa.gov and lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov.
• South Dakota: SDCL chapter 32-3 enumerated in full, and sections 32-3-51.19, 32-3-51.20 and 32-3-51.21 read individually. sdlegislature.gov.
• Alabama: Ala. Code section 32-8-87 in full; Rules 810-5-75-.57, 810-5-75-.48 and 810-5-75-.59 in full. alison.legislature.state.al.us and admincode.legislature.state.al.us.
• Iowa: 761 IAC chapter 405 in full, as amended effective 23 April 2025. legis.iowa.gov.
• Arkansas: 27 CAR Part 14, sections 14-101 through 14-109, in full. Bureau of Legislative Research.
• Indiana: 75 IAC 3 in full. iar.iga.in.gov.

Two limits from the first reading have since been closed. Arkansas does not host its codified statute in free HTML, it designates a commercial publisher as its official code host, but we have since read the statutory definition itself, Ark. Code section 27-14-2301(6): a salvage vehicle is one that is water-damaged, or that "[s]ustains any other damage in an amount equal to or exceeding seventy percent (70%) of its average retail value." That matches the regulation. Indiana's statutory definition we have now read on Indiana's own official source, iga.in.gov: IC 9-22-3-3(a) requires a salvage title only within the last seven model years, and its seventy percent figure governs only the self-insurer and after-acquired limbs at (a)(2), the ordinary insurer limb at (a)(1) carries no percentage and turns on whether it is "economically impractical to repair."

Where this page quotes states we have not read directly (the numerator examples from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kansas, Texas and Utah), we say so at the point of use.

We publish the reading, the citation and the date, so that you can check us. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it and say what changed.

What we could not read, and the walls we hit

Arkansas does not publish its codified statute in free HTML. It designates a commercial publisher as its official code host. We read the regulation in full and have since read the statutory definition itself, but the state's own free copy of the codified section is not something we can open, and this page does not pretend otherwise.

The numerator examples from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Kansas, Texas and Utah are not first-party readings. They are marked as such where they appear. They illustrate how numerators differ; they are not statements of those states' current tests.

We did not read every state's junk, non-repairable and flood provisions to the depth of the six quoted at length. The 51-jurisdiction table carries each jurisdiction's salvage or total-loss boundary and the citation we read for it. It is not a claim to have read any state's whole title chapter.

What happens in a particular office is out of scope. No text quoted here says what a county clerk or a state examiner does in practice, and we have not looked.

Corrections

2026-08-24. This log opened. No correction had been recorded on this page before today. The substantive change made since the deep readings is the one described under How this page was researched: the Arkansas and Indiana statutory definitions, read on 2026-08-12 on those states' own official sources, replaced a regulation-only reading of Arkansas and an unread Indiana statute.

2026-09-02. Virginia was published as a 75 per cent state and should not have been. From this page's first table until today, the Virginia row read Virginia | 75%. It now reads Virginia | Formula; 75% only for recovered stolen vehicles. Virginia's operative test at Va. Code section 46.2-1600 contains no percentage. It brands a late model vehicle whose estimated cost of repair "would exceed its actual cash value less its current salvage value". The 75 is arithmetic, not statute: "current salvage value" means the salvage value "as determined by the insurer responsible for paying the claim, or, if no insurance company is responsible therefor, 25 percent of the actual cash value", and only by taking that 25 per cent default does the test become repair cost exceeding 75 per cent of actual cash value. Where a carrier is on the claim, and on an insured collision loss one almost always is, the subtrahend is whatever that carrier determines, so the effective threshold floats and is set by the payer. The one place Virginia states 75 per cent outright is for recovered stolen vehicles. Our 75 was the uninsured owner's number, and stating it as Virginia's rule stated the exception as the rule.

Two things about how this was caught are worth recording, because they bear on how much to trust the rest of the table. First, the register behind this page had said so all along: the Virginia row's own note has opened with the words "do not publish Virginia as a 75 percent state" since 2026-08-05. The table is generated from that register so that it cannot drift from the data, and it did not drift. It faithfully printed a number the data said not to print, because the generator read the number field and never read the note beside it. Second, nothing on this page found it. It surfaced during unrelated research, and only after a broader claim that this table was wrong about five states was checked and turned out to be wrong about all five. The generator now refuses to print a bare percentage for any row its register marks that way, and a check that runs before every deploy refuses the whole deploy if it ever does.

2026-09-02. New York's row is unchanged, and its sourcing is now stated properly. The number, 75 per cent of retail value at the time of loss under 15 NYCRR 20.20(c)(1)(ii), has not changed and is not in doubt. What changed is what stands behind it. The official New York Codes, Rules and Regulations are published commercially and we cannot open them, so this row rests on three independent copies of the same text that agree word for word: an academic mirror, a second legal publisher, and a New York Department of Financial Services legal opinion that quotes the clause in full, which is the state's own voice rather than a copy of it. We have also corrected our internal note, which described the denominator as retail value at the time of damage. The regulation says at the time of loss.

2026-09-03. Virginia was not one bad row, and this is the larger correction. Yesterday's entry recorded that this page had published Virginia as a 75 per cent state when its statute contains no percentage for an insured claim. That fix was correct and it was too small. An audit read 29 of these 51 rows at the statute or regulation itself and found the same class of defect in fourteen of them, in two distinct shapes, and a second reader who was not told what the first had found re-read the five hardest and agreed on all five.

Seven rows now say in the Test column what their percentage actually governs, because it does not govern an ordinary insured total loss. Oregon's 80 per cent reaches damage "that is not covered by an insurer"; the insured case is a different subsection with no percentage in it. Florida's cited sub-subparagraph opens "When an uninsured motor vehicle or mobile home is wrecked or damaged". Rhode Island's section is titled "Salvage by non-insurer". Wyoming's 75 per cent applies "in the event an insurance company is not involved in the settlement of the claim". Indiana's 70 per cent reaches an owner who insures its own vehicles or who bought the car already damaged. Illinois' 50 per cent reaches repossessions, fleets, flood vehicles and dealers, and an insured total loss in Illinois has no percentage at all. Missouri's 80 per cent is capped at six model years and its denominator may be a value "determined by an insurance company using any other procedure recognized by the insurance industry", which puts the payer on both sides of the ratio.

Eleven further rows now show an age or value gate beside the number. A percentage that only reaches vehicles within eight model years is not the same claim as a percentage that reaches every vehicle, and printing it bare overstated its reach. The register behind this page had recorded every one of those gates for months. The page simply never rendered them, which is the same failure as the Virginia row and not a coincidence: a generated table shows the fields the generator reads, and nobody had asked what else the data knew.

The two warnings now printed under the table are generated from the register in the same pass as the rows, so their counts cannot drift from what the table actually shows.

What this correction does not do. Twenty-two of the 51 rows were not read in this audit, so no claim is made about them beyond what their own citations already carried. Arkansas is unresolved: its statute carries no age limit and its rule does, and which one governs was not settled. North Carolina's six model years is deliberately not shown as a gate, because in North Carolina the age changes the numerator rather than whether the percentage applies at all. And the deeper point in the first warning above is not a defect in any single row: in most of these states an insurer's declaration of total loss makes the vehicle salvage on its own, so the percentage is a ceiling on the cases the declaration does not reach. Every state-by-state total loss threshold table on the internet, including the one on this page until today, invites a reader to compare numbers that are answering different questions.

2026-09-03, second entry. All 51 rows have now been read, and the rows showing no number were the worse problem. The correction above was made with 22 of the 51 rows still unread, and it said so. Those 22 have now been read at their own statutes and rules. Nine more are flagged, bringing the total to seventeen rows that now say in the Test column what their rule actually governs.

The surprise is where they were. Six of the nine are rows this table shows as "No percentage" or "Formula, no ratio stated". We had been auditing the numbers, on the assumption that a misleading table misleads by stating a wrong figure. These rows mislead by silence: Vermont issues no salvage title at all for a vehicle over fifteen years old, South Dakota reaches only vehicles ten model years old or newer, Washington excludes vehicles six or more model years old unless they clear a value threshold, and Mississippi exempts vehicles over ten years old worth under $1,500. A reader who saw "no percentage" and concluded the rule reaches every car was wrong in a way this page caused.

The other three: Alaska and Pennsylvania both compute their ratio from a figure the insurer supplies, which is the Virginia problem in two more states, and New Jersey gates on both age and value.

Arkansas is resolved, and our own note about it was half wrong. The register recorded that Arkansas' statute carries no age limit while its rule does, and treated the conflict as unresolved. Reading both: the 2019 amendment our note pointed at was a flood-damage amendment that never touched the threshold or any age limit, and the statute draws the same seven-model-year line itself, giving insurers a permissive route for vehicles eight model years and older against a mandatory duty for everything newer. The rule tracks the statute's own architecture rather than contradicting it. No court has tested that, and we do not claim one has.

Two smaller corrections found on the way: Montana's citation is section 61-3-210(7), not (8), and the word salvage does not appear in the Hawaii section we had cited at all.

Every jurisdiction in this table has now been read at its own primary source. That is the first time this page has been able to say so.

General consumer information: not legal, insurance, or financial advice. Requirements, coverage, and practices vary by state, policy, and manufacturer.

Cite this dataset

This dataset is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may republish it, including commercially, in whole or in part. The licence asks one thing in return: credit the source and link to it. Copy the line below.

"Salvage and total-loss title thresholds by US state", The Autobody Directory (Quorum Industries LLC), 2026. Licensed CC BY 4.0. https://theautobodydirectory.com/guides/salvage-title-thresholds-by-state-why-they-do-not-compare

• Page to cite and link: https://theautobodydirectory.com/guides/salvage-title-thresholds-by-state-why-they-do-not-compare
• Machine-readable copy: https://theautobodydirectory.com/api/salvage-titles.json
• Questions, corrections, or a figure you want checked before you publish it: see Press. We would rather be corrected than cited wrongly.

Where this fits

Each link says what it is for. We add one only when a reader on this page has a real reason to need that page next.

• Will My Car Get a Salvage Title? (the plain-English version of what the threshold does to you)
• Four Total-Loss Rules Buried in State Title Law (where these numbers come from in each state's code)
• What a Rebuilt Title Actually Certifies (what the brand certifies once the threshold has done its work)