IFTA and audit filing

What IFTA actually asks of you

The International Fuel Tax Agreement exists so that a carrier crossing eight states in a week files one return instead of eight. You report the miles you ran in each jurisdiction and the fuel you bought in each jurisdiction, and the tax is redistributed accordingly.

The arithmetic is simple. The record-keeping is not. A correct return depends on two things being complete and reconcilable: distance records by jurisdiction and fuel purchase receipts with the right detail on them. Miss either and the return is a guess.

Most returns that come back wrong were not calculated wrong. They were built on records that did not support them.

What is included

• Quarterly IFTA returns — prepared from your ELD distance data and fuel receipts, reconciled before filing, and filed to your base jurisdiction on time.
• Form 2290 — the heavy vehicle use tax return, with the stamped Schedule 1 you need for registration.
• UCR registration — the annual Unified Carrier Registration, renewed rather than forgotten.
• State permits — trip and fuel permits, and the state-specific registrations that catch carriers running into New York, New Mexico, Kentucky and Oregon.
• Record reconciliation — ELD mileage checked against fuel purchases so gaps are found by us in week one, not by an auditor in year three.
• Audit support — if the audit letter arrives, the backup file is already assembled.

What an IFTA audit is looking for

An IFTA auditor is not trying to catch you out on arithmetic. They are testing whether your distance and fuel records are complete enough to support the numbers you filed.

The failure mode is almost always the same: mileage that cannot be traced back to a trip record, or fuel receipts that are missing the detail needed to count — date, seller, gallons, and the vehicle the fuel went into. When records will not support the filing, the auditor is entitled to assess on their own basis instead, and that basis is rarely in your favour.

The defence is boring and it works: keep the records as you go, reconcile every quarter, and never file a number you cannot show the working for.

Available on its own

You do not have to dispatch with us to file with us. Plenty of carriers run their own board and simply hand over the quarterly filing and the record-keeping behind it.