OAK BROOK, IL – Illinois car dealers will be allowed to charge a $169.27 documentary fee on the sale of all new and used vehicles in 2016.
The so-called “paper work” fee is 84 cents higher than the $168.43 charge in 2015, based on a 0.5% rise in the federal consumer price index.
Dealers are free to charge any amount of doc fee – or none at all, but $169.27 is the maximum allowable under guidelines established by the Illinois Attorney General's office. The DOC Fee is also taxable.
The doc fee was instituted in 1991 when the Illinois attorney general signed legislation that allowed dealers to charge a doc fee of no more than $40, a fee that could rise annually by no more than 1.5% based on any increase in the annual federal cost of living index.
The legislation, prompted by the Chicago Automobile Trade Assn., was in response to complaints that dealers were charging a variety of unexplained ad-on fees after the sale ranging from $25 to $300 and more for services that ran the gamut from filling out the paperwork to washing the trade-in before putting it on the used-car lot.
