Four times a year, truckers have to sit down and face one of the most annoying tasks in our industry. The quarterly IFTA report is filed by truckers for fuel tax payments. It requires the trucker to enter mileage data collected over the previous three months along with the amount of fuel purchased. In the end, the process takes time off the road, causes stress to the trucker, and results in unpredictable payments.
What is IFTA?
The International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA) is a fuel tax reporting program for motor vehicles that operate in more than one US state or Canadian province. to file one report instead of multiple.
Filing IFTA Step by Step
Before you get started, understand that the accuracy of your IFTA filing is based on how well you kept records through the quarter. Guesses rarely work. The penalties for not filing IFTA start at $50.00 and go up. Misfiling can have more severe penalties.
How to Track Miles and Fuel for IFTA
Keeping accurate records of miles and fuel purchases for each quarter is vital to filing an accurate IFTA and avoiding overpaying your taxes.
Miles per state
Since IFTA is based on miles driven in each state, there are different methods to track it.
- Manual tracking: Use the truck’s odometer. Note the mileage when entering and leaving a state can produce the correct number of miles per state. Truckers can use the Trip A and Trip B option on their dashboard. The numbers are recorded in a trip report or in a notebook.
- Electronic recording: Truckers use the same numbers but record them differently. Some will dictate their odometer reading into their phone as a note. Others might try to take a picture of the odometer. (Don’t do that. Please.) One new option might be to use the interior camera – read the odometer aloud and let the camera record it. Then the trucker will later retrieve that number for their records.
For IFTA, all miles count. Do not exclude deadhead miles or miles driven as personal conveyance. This is often the problem with filings that may trigger an audit.
Fuel Purchases
Fuel purchases are also part of the formulas, so tracking them is necessary. With the current use of credit cards, new truckers might think that a credit card receipt is enough. But credit card receipts do not have all the important information:
- Date of purchase
- Price per gallon or total amount
- Vendor’s name
- ID of the vehicle receiving the fuel
- Vendor’s address
- Purchaser’s name (driver or company)
- Type of fuel (gas, diesel, etc.).
Right now, many pumps have an option to send the receipt by email. If possible, use this system, particularly if it will record the vehicle number.
Organize your data in real time, not later. A daily log or trip report can be a big help when filing IFTA three months later.
IFTA Deadlines
IFTA is paid quarterly, due on the last day of the month after the end of the quarter. If the deadline is on a weekend or a federal holiday, it’s moved to the following Monday.
| Reporting Quarter | Due Date |
| January to March | April 30 |
| April to June | July 31 |
| July to September | October 31 |
| October to December | January 31 (of the following year.) |
Step 1: Assemble Your Data
So before beginning your IFTA tax report, make sure you have everything:
- Trip reports – include beginning and end dates, destination, trip origin, and routes.
- Fuel receipts.
- Mileage records.
- Current IFTA tax rates – each state or jurisdiction has different rates, so be careful.
(Getting a cup of coffee and a bottle of aspirin is optional but smart.)
Information is collected per state or jurisdiction, so organize it accordingly.
- Add up the taxes paid from fuel receipts.
- Add up the total miles.
To find the current tax rates, IFTA’s website keeps an up-to-date list, as does TruckingOffice.com. This is not required, but it can give you an idea of what your tax bill will be.
Step 3: Go to Your Base Jurisdiction’s IFTA Filing Site
All states and jurisdictions use the same form for IFTA reporting. When you received your IFTA stickers, a link to the website should have been included. If you’ve lost it, you can go to the TruckingOffice IFTA Resource Center and find the links there.
Downloading FORM IFTA 100 is not necessary. But for first-time filers, knowing what data the form requests will speed up the process.
The IFTA 100 form is 3 to 5 pages long (depending on the number of states you’ve driven through in the previous quarter.) Each type of fuel purchased gets a separate filing. If you purchase fuel exclusively for your refrigeration, it is not taxed on IFTA.
Prefilling the paper copy is not necessary but may speed up your data entry.
Step 4: Fill in the Form
All states and jurisdictions have online IFTA filing. Filing on paper is permitted but must be received by the deadline.
The time this process takes directly relates to how much data you have to enter.
If the state will accept a PDF of the report, you may file it that way.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Filing Your IFTA Reports
You’re only human and inherently prone to making mistakes here and there. But, when it comes to IFTA filing, mistakes can be expensive. So, before you start this quarter’s IFTA report, make sure you avoid these common mistakes:
- Late filing or failure to file at all.
- Estimating fuel use.
- Failure to document odometer Issues.
- Not logging personal miles.
- Miles-per-gallon discrepancies.
Should I Use Free IFTA Software?
“Free” IFTA software is never free. Many of the sites that offer “free” will charge to download your own data. Or don’t update the tax rates, so what they produce is incorrect. But the biggest problem with “free” IFTA calculators is that you have to reenter the data, which increases the risk of errors.
Truckers might try to use a spreadsheet, but it’s a work-intensive alternative.
Compare the risks of an error-ridden report with those of a single-entry system that reuses your data. One of them saves time, keeps you on the road, and is more accurate.
The superior choice is using a TMS like TruckingOffice PRO. Keeping all your trucking business data in streamlines business management from days and hours to minutes.
Why Not Make IFTA Reporting Easier?
There is an easier way to record mileage and fuel use, maintain proof of purchase, and file IFTA reports. Using your ELD to track and record miles per state eliminates the manual record-keeping.
Linking your ELD to your TMS is ideal: the most accurate numbers, verified by ELD records, combined with the uploaded fuel receipts, will produce a report that ensures you don’t under- or overpay your IFTA taxes.
Take TruckingOffice Out for a Road Test
TruckingOffice offers owner-operators a free trial to discover what complete trucking management software can do. Owner-operators need
- Trucking-specific reports: IFTA, IRP, Company Overview, Cost Per Mile, Revenue Per Load
- Manage Dispatches: Upload rate cons and create routes
- Accounting Management: Create invoices, track past-due invoices
- Automatic Uploads: rate cons, fuel cards, and expense tracking
- Vehicle Compliance: US DOT maintenance records and scheduling
- Trucker Stats™: data analysis geared for trucking companies.
With our integrated TruckingOffice PRO TMS and ELD packages, you get all that and more with the most comprehensive trucking management software available, and it’s easily affordable.
Simply sign up for our free, no-obligation trial. Check out all the features of our program, especially the part that makes IFTA reporting easier.
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