Yes, it’s that time of year again. IFTA is due soon and you need to take care of your filing. Have you done it yet? Or do you still worry about IFTA?
Procrastination? Don’t want to give the government money until the last minute? Can’t find the time?
We have a lot of reasons to worry about IFTA and avoid it. But ignore it at your peril.
Penalties. Fines. Kicked off the road.
Procrastination
Lots of people wait until the last minute to do annoying or complicated chores. There’s a lot of psychology about it on the net. Some say it’s perfectionism that says, “I’ll wait till the last minute and do the best I can then, but if I screw it up, it’s not my fault.” Others say that we procrastinate because we can think of better things to do, which is why we might clean the bathroom instead of paying our IFTA taxes.
Putting off tasks we don’t want to do until the last minute doesn’t always help us. First, our brains are aware of the work to be done, no matter how much we try to push it aside. That creates a level of stress that might aggravate our stomachs, raise our blood pressure, or give us that irritating stress headache right behind our eyes. You know the one I’m talking about.
Second, we may be setting ourselves up for failure. We don’t know that we have everything to complete the task. Like maybe we haven’t gotten around to entering all the fuel purchases into the records and those last three receipts… where are they? When the midnight deadline approaches, it can create panic. And when the deadline passes, there are always those fines and penalties waiting for us.
And you never know when a system may be down because everyone else is trying to do the work at the exact same moment.
It’s My Money, Thank You Very Much
I’m not assuming that everyone has this opinion, but there’s a significant faction of people who wait because they hate to pay one minute before it’s due. These are the people who are happy when they don’t get a tax refund because the government doesn’t pay interest on the money it has collected. Or they don’t mind paying taxes and they file for extensions just on principle. IFTA and IRP are probably in the same category in their minds.
Again, this is risky. If you’ve got a plan to keep the money in a dedicated account so you know you’ll have it on hand when the taxes are due, good for you. But especially in the case of IFTA when a jurisdiction might not update its fuel tax percentage in time for you to have enough money on hand to pay the tax, or you might not have calculated what you need, TruckingOffice can calculate your expected IFTA amount at the push of a button which will help an owner-operator know what to expect.
TIme to Pay Taxes When You’re On the Road?
With all the supply chain issues on top of the brutal weather we’re having this year, maybe the thought of taking time to do your IFTA filing is more than you want to do. Time off the road is time you’re not making money.
If you’re expecting to take hours to finish your IFTA calculations, yep. You’re right. Time off the road is expensive. And if you’re not the one doing it, but someone at home is stuck with the job but they have questions… Making time to answer can be just as frustrating and just as wearing.
We have a better idea.
Don’t Worry about IFTA
How? you ask.
Use software to manage your trucking business that handles IFTA too. Use software that updates the tax rates in a timely fashion. The software you need is going to simplify this task to a few minutes every quarter.
- Stand-alone software packages take a lot of time. You might as well do it by hand. Essentially, you are. All those numbers don’t jump into the computer by themselves.
- Doing it by hand? Oh please. Whether you’re writing down all those numbers on an index card, taking pics of your odometer when you cross state lines, or keeping everything on a spreadsheet? How long is it going to take?
Just use a complete trucking software system that’s going to handle your IFTA numbers based on the data you enter when you create the dispatch. No extra numbers are needed with TruckingOffice PRO. PC*Miler creates and tracks your routes, so the numbers are already available. The updated tax rates will give you the exact amounts that you owe. You won’t worry about IFTA overpayment, underpayment, or even late payment because, on the first day of the next quarter, you can file immediately and stop worrying about it.
Don’t want to worry about IFTA? Use TruckingOffice
Trust us. We know it works. We’ve been doing this for a long time and we have thousands of happy owner-operators and fleet managers who use our program to run their businesses and keep track of IFTA for them.
Tell you what. You can have a free trial of our IFTA software right now. The whole thing, not just parts of it. You can enter all of last quarter’s data – no charge. It will produce an IFTA report that lets you file in minutes, not hours, not days. You can do it from the cab of your truck while you’re waiting for a load. Your data will be safely stored. Your taxes can be paid and you won’t miss a minute on the road.
Give us a try. TruckingOffice makes it easy. We promise you won’t have to worry about IFTA again.
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