The RTA Fleet Management Software includes a feature that assists you in calculating fuel taxes for the various required state tax reports. The system tracks miles traveled and fuel consumed in each state for each fuel transaction entered in the system. This, of course, requires that you enter the information for these kinds of statistics, but the time savings produced by this feature are great in comparison to calculating these figures by hand.
Fuel tax reporting may be one of the biggest reporting problems in any fleet. This feature is designed to ease the burden of reporting, not replace it. RTA provides the numbers on the reports; it is still your responsibility to transfer and manipulate these numbers for your various state tax reports. Since each state is different in the manner in which it handles these fuel taxes, you'll need to think over carefully just how this feature will be of best use to you.
The Setup:
The Procedure:
Define the tax rates for each state or province your fleet travels in. Up to 60 different states and/or provinces can be defined. Trim the table down to contain only the states that your vehicles will be traveling in to speed up searches, calculations, and reports. To add, modify, or delete the states and tax rates, do the following:
To modify, highlight the record to change, choose Edit, and then modify the tax rate and/or description. If you change a tax rate, the new rate becomes effective immediately and all calculations are based on the new rate.
To delete, highlight the record to delete, choose Delete, and then choose Yes to confirm the deletion.
NOTE: The dates displayed at the top of the window print at the top of the State Report by Vehicle (RFV); choose Change to modify the dates printed on the report.
The RTA system tracks state mileage and fuel usage only for vehicles that are flagged as fuel taxable. Vehicles can be flagged as such individually through the vehicle record or globally for a range of vehicles using the Set Vehicle Tax Flag program in the Utilities 2 add-on package (SIVT). To mark an individual vehicle record as fuel taxable, do the following:
Once the switches and vehicles have been set up for tracking fuel taxes, the RTA system automatically accumulates totals for state miles, turnpike miles, taxable fuel, and tax-paid fuel as fuel entries are entered or uploaded using the Many States, Quick Fuel Entry, TriCoder Input, and Electronic Fueling. State miles can also be input without having to input fuel data using the State Tax Input option.
This option allows state mileage figures to be posted to vehicles without having to input fuel transactions. It should be noted that this option only updates state mileage figures but does not update the vehicle's primary or fuel meter readings. To use this option, do the following:
This report contains the totals (not detail) for the fleet in each state. It also provides the fleet MPG for calculation purposes. The bottom of the report shows grand totals for the entire fleet in all states. This report can be generated to show figures for the current period, quarter, or year. This report is a very good way to see the totals for your fleet, for all states.
This report shows all vehicles that traveled in a specified range of states, providing details for the totals printed on the previous report, State Report by Fleet.
This report prints vehicle details by state and is a nice crosscheck for your fleet, showing all states each vehicle has traveled in along with the mileage and fuel usage for each vehicle. The data shown on this report is basically a combination of the other two state reports.
As you view reports or enter data, you may come across some values that require modification. The Change Vehicle by State Figures option allows changes to be made to the vehicle figures, which in turn will affect the figures on the fuel tax reports. It's best to make correcting entries in the options where the errors occurred so there is an audit trail; however, direct changes can be made to the figures by doing the following: