Make claims for Fuel Tax Credits going back up to four years

The FTC module can perform retrospective calculations going back up to four years so you can cover any under-claims or missing claims your business may be entitled to from the past. This powerful FTC data also helps identify under-utilised and over-spent vehicles in your business to optimise your fleet operations and minimise operational costs.

What are Fuel Tax Credits?

Businesses in Australia that operate vehicles or machinery for work may be able to claim fuel tax credits, which allow them to recover some of the fuel tax included in the price of fuel used for business activities.

Businesses can claim fuel tax credits in their business activity statement (BAS) in the same way as they claim GST credits. Claiming regularly means more cash flow to your business and helps offset the price of fuel.

The amount of fuel tax credits a business can claim depends on:

• When the fuel is acquired
• The fuel used
• What activity the fuel is used in

The Fuel Tax Act 2006 allows commercial vehicle operators to claim a rebate for fuel excise they have paid for various eligible activities including activity that is not on a public road, activity on a public road in heavy vehicles, and when operating auxiliary equipment.

The fuel tax credit rates change regularly, and you need to use the rate that applies on the date you acquired the fuel.

A business cannot claim Fuel Tax Credits for fuels that have been used in light vehicles of 4.5 tonnes GVM or less, traveling on public roads, fuel used for private purposes, and fuel that a business has acquired but did not use.

What you should know about Fuel Tax Credits

Fuel Tax Credits are an important entitlement for many transport operators, based on apportioning fuel use between eligible activities. Fuel is one of the biggest costs for businesses running commercial fleets so it is important for businesses to understand their fuel tax credit entitlements.

Calculating Fuel Tax Credits

The Fuel Tax Act 2006 and regulations do not set out any methods that an entity must use to apportion taxable fuel.

The most common methods which are considered fair and reasonable are:

• Basic method – determining the quantity of taxable fuel used for each business activity.
• Percentage use method – where a reliable percentage of taxable fuel used for each business activity, for a sample period, is applied over a number of tax periods.

Accurately determining public and non-public road use with precision is a complex spatial analysis task. The ATO does not provide a definitive list of public and non-public roads or a single accepted methodology for calculation. Manually calculating Fuel Tax Credit takes hours of work often resulting in conservative FTC amounts.

Automating the Fuel Tax Credit Calculation

MTData has trusted partners which fuel tax credit calculator automates the fuel apportionment calculation process using high-frequency GPS position data from your telematics devices combined with bespoke mapping data covering national road and land features. What used to require weeks of manual work using limited sample data can be produced in minutes, using complete and highly detailed data of live vehicle activity. MTData’s partners implements an approach that can be considered as a detailed version of the Estimated Use method, although the output includes not only an estimate of the amount of fuel used but also a percentage allocation of the fuel across each business activity. Ready to get more from your fleet data? Get in touch us to speak to an expert.