Home › Guides › How IFTA Quarterly Filing Works
If you run a truck across state lines, IFTA is the fuel-tax paperwork that follows you home four times a year. Here is what it is, who needs it, and how to stay ahead of the four due dates.
IFTA stands for the International Fuel Tax Agreement. It is an agreement among the 48 contiguous U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces that lets a carrier report fuel taxes for all of those places on a single quarterly return, filed with one home state, instead of filing separately in every state it drove through.
Here is the problem it solves. States collect fuel tax at the pump, but the tax is really meant to pay for the roads you actually drive on. If you buy diesel in one state but burn most of it in another, the numbers do not line up. IFTA reconciles that: you report the miles you drove and the fuel you bought in each place, and the system sorts out who you owe and who owes you.
One thing worth being clear about up front: IFTA is administered by the member states and provinces, not by the FMCSA or the IRS. It is separate from your USDOT registration and separate from Form 2290 (the federal Heavy Vehicle Use Tax). Different program, different agency, different deadline.
IFTA applies to a qualified motor vehicle that travels in two or more IFTA jurisdictions. A vehicle generally qualifies if it is used to move people or property and meets any one of these: it has two axles and a gross or registered gross weight over 26,000 pounds; it has three or more axles regardless of weight; or it is used in a combination whose combined weight is over 26,000 pounds. Recreational vehicles are excluded.
If that describes your truck and you cross state lines, you almost certainly need an IFTA license and decals. You get them from your base jurisdiction — usually the state where your vehicle is registered and where you keep your records. You receive one license (copies go in each truck) and a set of decals for the cab.
If you only ever operate inside a single state, IFTA typically does not apply to you, though that state may have its own intrastate fuel-tax rules. When in doubt, your base jurisdiction's IFTA office is the authority.
IFTA runs on calendar quarters, and each return is due at the end of the month after the quarter closes. These dates do not change from year to year:
If a due date lands on a weekend or a legal holiday, it generally moves to the next business day. Just as important: you must file every quarter even if you did not drive. No miles still means a return — a "zero" return — and skipping it can bring penalties, interest, or a suspended license. A missed IFTA filing is one of the easiest compliance items to forget and one of the more annoying to fix, which is exactly the kind of deadline DOTDeadline is built to remind you about before it passes.
IFTA lives or dies on your records. For each quarter you need two things broken out state by state: the miles you drove in each jurisdiction, and the gallons of fuel you bought in each jurisdiction. From your total miles and total gallons you calculate your fleet's average miles per gallon, then use that to estimate how much fuel you burned in each state.
In practice that means keeping trip records (dates, routes, odometer or GPS mileage, and miles per state) and keeping your fuel receipts, which need to show the date, location, gallons, and the seller. Many carriers let an electronic logging device or a fuel card do the heavy lifting, but the receipts and mileage summaries are what a state can ask to see in an audit.
Hold on to this paperwork. IFTA record-retention rules generally require keeping supporting records for four years from the return due date or filing date. Confirm the exact retention period with your base jurisdiction, since the details are enforced at the state level.
There is no single national IFTA tax rate. Each jurisdiction sets its own fuel tax rate, and those rates can change every quarter. That is why your return can show you owing money to one state and getting credit from another in the same three months: you may have bought cheap fuel in a low-tax state and driven your miles in a higher-tax one.
Because the rates move, do not rely on last quarter's numbers or on a figure you saw online months ago. The member jurisdictions publish an official quarterly tax-rate matrix, and your base state's filing portal applies the current rates when you file. Use those official rates rather than any figure repeated secondhand — including here.
The math nets out to a single number per quarter: a total you owe, or a credit. You file the return and settle up with your base jurisdiction, which handles the distribution to the other states for you.
The hard part of IFTA is rarely the arithmetic — modern portals and software handle that. The hard part is remembering that four separate deadlines exist and that they arrive whether or not you had a busy quarter. April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31 have a way of passing quietly when you are focused on loads.
A simple habit helps: reconcile your miles and fuel at the end of each month so nothing piles up, keep every receipt in one place, and set a reminder a couple of weeks ahead of each quarterly due date. If you would rather not track it yourself, that is precisely what DOTDeadline does — it watches your federal and fuel-tax deadlines and nudges you before each one, so a filing never slips.
While you are squaring away deadlines, it is worth checking your biennial MCS-150 update too, since that one is easy to miss. Our free MCS-150 due-date calculator on the site tells you your update month and year from your USDOT number in a few seconds.
IFTA lets you report fuel taxes for every state you drove through on one quarterly return filed with your home state. If you run a qualified motor vehicle across two or more jurisdictions, you file four times a year — due April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31 — even in quarters when you did not drive. Track your miles and fuel state by state, keep your receipts for about four years, and use the official quarterly rate matrix rather than any secondhand figure. This is general information, not legal or tax advice; DOTDeadline is not affiliated with or endorsed by the FMCSA or the IRS, so confirm the specifics with your base jurisdiction.
Enter your USDOT number once and see your MCS-150 due date free — then keep every federal deadline in one place.
Check my date →DOTDeadline is an independent reminder tool. It is NOT affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the FMCSA, the U.S. DOT, the IRS, or any government agency. General information only — not legal, tax, or compliance advice. Always confirm with the official agency.