Motor Fuels Tax Minute, Episode 58: State Licenses

In this week’s episode of Motor Fuels Tax Minute, our hosts cover whether state licenses are continuous or require renewal.

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Detailed Description of Weaver’s Motor Fuels Tax Minute, Episode 58

00:00:00
Kelly: Welcome to our Motor Fuels Tax Minute vlog where we talk all things motor fuel tax.

Leanne, what have you been working on recently?

00:00:08
Leanne: I’ve had a lot of work recently on licenses. Whether it’s to do with new business, existing business, or expanding business. Something that’s come up a few times is: are licenses continuous or do they need to be renewed? So, the 637 license is continuous with some exceptions. And I think I’m going to talk about that on another one, but today I’m going to talk a little bit about the state licenses.

It can get confusing. There’s a lot of states where once you apply one time for a motor fuel license, as long as you’re still in that business, that license continues without having to do anything, and examples would be Louisiana, Alabama, Texas. But then you’ve got some states that you do need to renew, and examples would be New Jersey, Florida, or Pennsylvania, and it’s important to remember those.

Typically, the states send out reminders, but it’s not inevitable, or it could get lost. The dates aren’t always obvious. It’s not always the end of the year. New Jersey is a three-year renewal. Some of the others, such as Pennsylvania, is the middle of the year — it’s May or June, it’s not at the end of the year. Florida does keep it simple. They are at the end of the year. Maryland does it by renewing a bond rather than just the license. That’s just four states. There are some others as well, but we can always talk about that another time or maybe we’ll get a blog post up about that. It is a question I’ve seen a lot and I thought it was worth talking about.

00:01:40
Kelly: That is interesting. I think a lot of people do miss those semiannual renewals because they’re just tracking December, December, December.

Now, here’s the question that I’m sure you get asked a lot. We’ve seen Florida’s license application. It is extensive. Do they have to do that entire application all over again?

00:01:59
Leanne: It is a different renewal application, slightly different, so it shouldn’t be quite as intense. I think once they’ve got all those fingerprints one time, they don’t ask for them every time, but it’s not inevitable. If you let it lapse, there’s a chance that they’re not going to take that renewal application. They may ask for a whole new one.

So, it is important to keep track of those dates and just get them in so you’re not having any lapses. You don’t want to be charged tax out of the blue and, certainly in Florida, you don’t want to have to deal with an overly arduous license process if it’s not necessary.

00:02:32
Kelly: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for the great information. And thank you everyone for joining us on this week’s Motor Fuels Tax Minute.

Please tune in next time and please submit any ideas you might have that you want us to cover. You’ll get a little bit of Weaver swag with it.