ELD data: Take control of yours to avoid IFTA, IRP audit fines
From Overdrive Online. If you’re in the situation of many owner-operators and small fleets and trying to squeeze a little return-on-investment out of an ELD, tread carefully with players new to the trucking industry getting into the partial automation of International Fuel Tax Agreement and International Registration Plan data collection for tax-reporting purposes. Buyer beware,…
From Overdrive Online.
If you’re in the situation of many owner-operators and small fleets and trying to squeeze a little return-on-investment out of an ELD, tread carefully with players new to the trucking industry getting into the partial automation of International Fuel Tax Agreement and International Registration Plan data collection for tax-reporting purposes. Buyer beware, say reps of the National American Transportation Services Association, whose member companies collectively work with more than 75,000 carriers who operate more than a million trucks.
Current NATSA President Dave Gray, also president of compliance services provider Glostone Trucking Solutions, emphasizes different standards for ELDs’ hours-of-service compliance support functions and IFTA data’s needs, particularly in the realm of long-term record-keeping.
State IFTA and International Registration Plan auditors, should you be audited by either, will want records going back four to nearly seven years, respectively, far and away beyond what’s needed for hours of service. If you end up utilizing an ELD service provider for IFTA/IRP data collection, don’t purge mileage and/or trip data you download from the ELD provider yourself, and make sure your agreement with the provider gives you ready access to that data years down the line if it’s stored primarily in a cloud account.