Plenty of drivers have stopped driving in the last quarter. Whether it’s bad rates, unreasonable shippers, or just plain burnout, truckers are parking right now. Maybe they’ve only taken loads in state. Maybe they’ve only driven 10 loads in the last month, when 10 loads was last year’s weekly work. Lots of maybes. As a result, TruckingOffice has gotten a few questions boil down to this: Do I have to file IFTA if I haven’t driven?
FIle IFTA or Else
When you get your IFTA stickers for your truck, you make a commitment to file IFTA every quarter, regardless of how much – or any miles – you’ve driven.
It’s that simple. Even if you parked for Q3, even if you only drove inside your home state, it doesn’t matter.
You must file IFTA every quarter.
What happens if I don’t?
It hits your bottom line. Plain and simple. You will pay. At the very least, $50. But it could go much higher, based on how much you owe. If you only took loads in your state and never went out of state, then you still must file IFTA.
So what? If I parked my truck all quarter, $50 is nothing.
Not nothing, if you didn’t bring in any money last quarter and you still have a mortgage, truck loan, and bills to pay.
If you only took loads in your state and never went out of state, then you still must file IFTA.
You won’t have to pay anything if you file IFTA on time. If you haven’t driven, if you haven’t bought fuel, you won’t owe anything. So just file 000.00 for everything and move on.
Adding insult to injury – those fines and penalties are not tax deductible.
Really? How much can I possibly owe?
If you cut way back on loads over the summer and ended up driving maybe once or twice per week, you’re going to owe something. It’s possible that you won’t owe much.
Keeping your record clean does has one more benefit.
Don’t file IFTA or file it late and the probability is that you will be on the short list for an IFTA audit.
Do you want to go there when it’s so simple to avoid that risk?
Just file IFTA on time. Even if you don’t owe them a penny.
File IFTA to the Penny
Even when you know you owe the taxes, it can be frustrating to know if you’re paying enough or paying too much. Not paying enough is as bad as not paying at all. Overpaying means money out of your pocket – money that you may need to run your trucking business.
Use TruckingOffice PRO to compute your IFTA bill to the penny. TruckingOffice updates the tax rates before every IFTA month, so you can be confident that the exact amount is computed. Not a penny more, not a penny less.
You can try out our IFTA report feature for free! (There are a lot of so-called free IFTA websites. We call them scams because while you can enter all your data for free, you can’t get anything out of those sites without paying for the data!) By signing up today for TruckingOffice’s free trial, you can enter all your data from the past quarter and get a free IFTA report, perfect to the penny, to file IFTA this month. While you’re on the free trial, you can use all of TruckingOffice PRO’s great features, including
- dispatch creation
- routing with PC*Miler
- invoice creating and monitoring
- maintenance scheduling and tracking
- driver records, including pay per load
- trucking company business reports.
There’s more, but isn’t that enough to help you run your trucking business and build it into a success?
Try out the free trial today! No credit card, debit card, or checking account information is required for a free trial.
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