As a trucking business in Canada, you are not required to participate in IFTA (international fuel tax agreement). However, as you may already be aware, it is very beneficial to your business to do so. There is just one large hiccup in all of this to which you must adjust; calculating the fuel tax. Thankfully, there is IFTA fuel tax calculation software that you can buy and install on your business computers that can help. Here is why you should have this software and use it.

IFTA Refunds Are Based on Accurate Data

Whenever there is an overpayment on fuel tax, IFTA helps get some of that money back in the form of a refund. To do so, you need very accurate records of every truck and every trip and every dollar spent on gas. (This is the biggest reason why a lot of trucking companies give their drivers gas credit cards so that it is easier to keep track of when the drivers stopped to get gas and how much was spent on gas at each stop.) If the data is inaccurate or incomplete, you may not get all of the refund you are owed. The software helps you keep track and stay on top of the gas dollars spent and tax incurred, regardless of where your trucks and drivers stopped for gas.

Refunds on Each Stop Are Based on a Wide Variety of Factors

Trucks have to fall within a certain weight, and heavier trucks need and use more fuel than lighter ones. The number of axles is also a factor that is taken into the calculation. Distance and number of stops to refuel and where those refueling stops occurred are also factors. You may get a refund on the tax when a twenty-six-thousand ton, three axle truck stops to refuel in Quebec with a sixty-five-cent tax on fuel, but that same truck empty and in another province will not garner the same rebate. Gas is not the same in every city in a particular province, either.

That is why all of these factors have to be entered manually into the computer software so that the software can accurately calculate taxes due or refunds owed. Imagine having to do that on paper and trying to figure in all factors while figuring out the taxes! It is a lot t try and remember when you are already so busy trying to run a trucking business!