Indiana IFTA Filing Walkthrough (Quarterly)

Most states run one fuel tax license. Indiana runs two out of the same office, and picking the wrong one is the classic Indiana mistake. The International Fuel Tax Agreement license covers a carrier that travels in Indiana plus at least one other jurisdiction. A carrier that never leaves Indiana holds an Indiana Motor Carrier Fuel Tax license instead. Both live at the Department of Revenue's Motor Carrier Services, in its IFTA and MCFT Section, and both file quarterly, which is exactly why the distinction gets missed until a return comes back on the wrong form. The sourced fees, deadlines and penalty basis render on the Indiana IFTA page. This walkthrough puts them in the order you will meet them.

Step 1: pick the right license, because Indiana runs two

Start with the state border, not the truck. Travel in Indiana plus at least one other member jurisdiction puts you under IFTA. Operating only inside Indiana puts you under the Motor Carrier Fuel Tax, which has its own application, its own annual permit, its own cab card and its own emblem.

The qualification test is the familiar one. A qualified vehicle carries persons or property, and either has two axles with a gross vehicle weight or registered weight above the interstate threshold, or three axles or more regardless of weight, or runs in a combination whose combined gross or registered weight passes that same threshold. The intrastate side is drawn slightly differently: three axles or more on the power unit regardless of weight, or a combination above the threshold, or any vehicle above it on gross or registered weight. The sourced qualified-vehicle test, with its weight figure, is on the Indiana IFTA page.

Two forks catch carriers here. The first is the alternative-fuel exception. A carrier that does not cross state lines but operates a qualified vehicle running on alternative fuel takes Form MCFT-1A for intrastate registration and reporting, not the IFTA route. The second is the mixed fleet, and it does not let you split. A fleet holding both apportioned-plated vehicles that leave Indiana and Indiana base-plated vehicles that never do is licensed for the entire fleet under IFTA. There is no arrangement where half the yard files one way and half the other.

If neither license is worth opening, Indiana sells a way around. IC 6-6-4.1-13 lets a carrier buy a trip permit in place of the tax that a particular commercial motor vehicle's operation would otherwise generate. It authorizes five consecutive days, with the beginning and ending days printed on its face, and it relieves that vehicle of the quarterly report entirely. A separate repair and maintenance permit lets a carrier come into Indiana to repair or maintain its motor vehicles, semitrailers or trailers and return to the same state, on an annual fee that covers all of that carrier's vehicles. It is not transferable to another carrier, and no cargo or passengers move under it. The sourced prices are on the Indiana trip and fuel permits page.

Step 2: file Form IFTA-1A, and book the appointment that opens the account

The interstate application is Form IFTA-1A, the International Fuel Tax Agreement Application, carrying a $25 application fee. Read that as an application fee rather than a per-truck charge: the same amount opens an intrastate account on Form MCFT-1A, where IC 6-6-4.1-12 fixes the annual permit fee at the same figure.

You have two ways to send it. Scan or fax the signed application together with a credit card authorization form to the Motor Carrier Services new-account address or fax line, or mail it with a check payable to the Indiana Department of Revenue to the IFTA and MCFT Section on Milhouse Road in Indianapolis. Either way, a new account is opened by appointment with Motor Carrier Services or by email, and appointments are limited to one person or one account each, so a consultant cannot batch four clients into one slot.

Have the answers ready before the appointment. The application asks for the federal employer identification number, the Social Security number of every owner, partner or officer, the Indiana taxpayer identification number if you already have one, the apportioned registration account number if you already have one, the USDOT number if you already have one, the count of qualified vehicles needing decals, the fuel types you consume, and whether you keep bulk fuel storage tanks and in which jurisdictions. If the contact person is an authorized agent rather than an owner, partner or responsible officer, a completed Form POA-1 has to be enclosed. The supporting document checklist is not one list: it changes depending on whether your business address is commercial or residential property, and again by entity type across sole proprietorship, single-member and multi-member limited liability company, corporation and partnership.

Base jurisdiction is the hurdle before all of that. Indiana is your base for IFTA licensing and reporting if your qualified vehicles are registered here, you keep an established place of business here from which motor carrier operations are performed, and your operational control and operational records live in Indiana or can be produced in Indiana. Most owner-operators, sole proprietors and new Indiana businesses do not clear that on day one, and Indiana provides the practical alternative: residency also qualifies you for a new account, which is the route a business too new to prove an established place of business actually takes.

Apportioned plates run on a separate track in the same department, covered on the Indiana IRP registration page, and state operating authority for a carrier that stays inside Indiana sits on the Indiana intrastate authority page.

Step 3: take delivery of one cab card and a set of decals per truck

Processing produces two different things, and carriers routinely mix them up. One set of decals is issued for each qualified vehicle. One IFTA license cab card is issued for the company, not for each truck. Your job is the photocopier: keep the original cab card on file, copy it for every qualified vehicle, and keep a copy in the cab at all times.

Indiana publishes no separate decal charge, which is worth saying plainly because carriers arrive expecting one. Decals are issued when the application is processed, and additional decals may be requested for qualified motor vehicles added during the calendar year. Rather than print a plausible number the state does not publish, this site marks the decal price as unconfirmed and attaches the reasoning, which you can read on the Indiana IFTA page.

The intrastate side handles decals differently again, and this one is a genuine Indiana quirk. Under the Motor Carrier Fuel Tax, one decal is sent per qualified vehicle, but decals are required only for qualified vehicles using propane or butane, electricity, hydrogen, or hythane. A diesel intrastate fleet holds the permit and the cab card without a decal on the door.

Step 4: file the quarter online, because Indiana closed the paper route

Filing is electronic by rule, not by preference. Motor carriers have to manage all IFTA, Motor Carrier Fuel Tax and Proportional Use Credit transactions online in the department's Fuel Tax System, which covers processing and paying the quarterly return, renewing, and ordering additional decals. The single exception is a motor carrier holding a current online exemption. IC 6-6-4.1-10 sits underneath that requirement, directing that all reports be filed and all taxes remitted in an electronic format the department prescribes.

The dates come from the same section. IC 6-6-4.1-10(a) requires each carrier subject to the tax to submit the quarterly report on or before the last day of the month immediately following the quarter, which fixes the calendar at April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31. The full table is on the Indiana IFTA page.

Use the right form for the license you hold. An IFTA licensee files the quarterly fuel tax return on Form IFTA-101. A Motor Carrier Fuel Tax licensee files Form MCFT-101. A quarter with no travel is still a filing quarter: as long as you hold a fuel tax license and issued compliance decals, the return is due on time showing zero miles and zero gallons.

The return applies each jurisdiction's own rate to the miles you ran there. Indiana's special diesel line for the current quarter is $0.6300IFTA Fuel Tax Rate Matrix, 3rd Quarter 2026 (International Fuel Tax Association, Inc. (IFTA, Inc.))Verified Aug 10, 2026 per gallon in the national matrix. Check your arithmetic in the IFTA calculator, read every jurisdiction you ran in off the IFTA rates by state table before you submit, and use the national how to file IFTA guide for the record set an auditor expects behind the numbers.

The intrastate rate works on a different mechanism worth understanding. IC 6-6-4.1-4 does not set a standalone Motor Carrier Fuel Tax number. It ties the rate to the underlying Indiana fuel taxes: special fuel other than an alternative fuel or natural gas product is taxed at the Indiana special fuel rate, gasoline at the Indiana gasoline rate, and natural gas products and alternative fuels at the equivalent special fuel rate per diesel gallon, gasoline gallon or gallon equivalent. That is why the intrastate figure moves when the underlying state fuel tax moves, and why you confirm it against the Department of Revenue's current published schedule rather than last year's memory.

Step 5: check whether you are the carrier that does not file quarterly at all

Here is the fork almost no other state offers, and it is buried one subsection below the deadline rule. IC 6-6-4.1-10(b) exempts a carrier from the quarterly reporting requirement where all or substantially all of its previous calendar year mileage was driven in Indiana and the motor fuel it used was purchased in Indiana with the Indiana gasoline or special fuel tax already paid. The logic is clean: Indiana already collected the tax at the pump, on fuel burned on Indiana roads, so there is nothing left to apportion.

The exemption has an edge. A carrier that meets those conditions but runs some alternative fuel does not get a full pass. It reports and pays on the alternative fuel only, and leaves the rest alone.

What the exemption never touches is your books. A carrier relieved of the quarterly report still keeps the records the Indiana tax code requires, and an auditor arriving three years later will ask for them. Treat the exemption as relief from a filing, not as permission to stop measuring miles and gallons.

Step 6: price a late return by the agreement, not by the Indiana Code

If you go looking for an Indiana late-filing penalty figure, you will not find one, and the reason is structural rather than an oversight. IC 6-6-4.1-23 makes a person who fails to file a return by the due date, fails to pay the full amount of tax shown on the return by the due date, or incurs a negligence deficiency on examination subject to a penalty, and then sets that penalty at the amount calculated under the penalty provisions of the International Fuel Tax Agreement. IC 6-6-4.1-22 does the same thing on the other side, charging interest on a failure to file, a failure to pay the full amount shown by the due date, or a deficiency the department determines, at the rate calculated under the agreement's interest provisions.

Both sections point outward, so the number you owe comes from the agreement's uniform schedule rather than from Indiana. That is a real answer, not a gap, and it is the reason this site records Indiana's penalty as a basis instead of quoting a dollar amount or a percentage that does not exist in the Indiana Code. IC 6-6-4.1-14.5 confirms the design: the agreement governs reporting requirements and periods including uniform late penalties and interest rates, while the General Assembly keeps authority over the tax itself and its rates.

Money is not the only cost. Failure to submit a return on time may bring penalties, interest, IFTA license revocation, or assessments, and revocation is the one that stops trucks.

On bonding, Indiana is quiet in a way that favors new carriers. IC 6-6-4.1-14.5 lists whether bonding is required among the matters the agreement covers, but neither Form IFTA-1A nor the Department of Revenue's IFTA pages state a standing bond requirement for a first-time Indiana applicant, so this site records none rather than inventing one.

Step 7: claim the Proportional Use Credit, and file the returns first

Indiana runs a credit most carriers never hear about. Where a vehicle burns fuel to power equipment rather than to move the truck, the Proportional Use Credit refunds part of the fuel tax. Indiana treats that share of the fuel differently from the share that moved the vehicle down the road, and the certification step is where you prove which is which.

Two mechanics decide whether you actually collect it. Certification runs on Form PROP-1, and since January 1, 2025 claims must be submitted online through the Motor Carrier Services Fuel Tax System unless the carrier is online-exempt. That date matters because a carrier working from an older packet of instructions will still be looking for a mailing address.

The second mechanic is the one that costs money. Failure to submit the quarterly tax returns with payment results in denial of the credit claim. The credit is conditioned on a clean filing record, so a carrier that falls a quarter behind loses the refund on top of the penalty. Fix the returns first, then claim.

Step 8: renew every year, and close the account properly when you stop

Renewal is annual. A renewal application has to be submitted for the next calendar year's compliance decals and IFTA license cab card, and failing to renew in a timely manner may result in penalties or revocation fees. The intrastate side runs on its own clock and it is earlier than people expect: IC 6-6-4.1-12 requires the annual permit application not later than September 1 of the year before the permit takes effect, with the permit, cab card and emblem running January 1 through December 31, and lets the department extend that expiration by not more than 60 days.

Closing an account is the step carriers skip, and it is expensive to skip. Closure takes Form OSS-1, the return of all assigned decals and licenses, and the filing of the last quarterly return even when it shows zero activity. Leave the decals out in the world and quarterly returns keep falling due through the end of the credential period, including the fourth quarter return due January 31 of the following year. A carrier that parked its last truck in March and never sent the decals back can collect three more delinquent quarters without moving a wheel.

FAQ

Does an Indiana carrier that never leaves the state need IFTA?

No. That carrier licenses under the Indiana Motor Carrier Fuel Tax instead, on Form MCFT-1A, and files its quarterly return on Form MCFT-101 rather than Form IFTA-101. Both licenses come out of the same Motor Carrier Services office at the Department of Revenue, which is why the wrong one gets picked so often. A fleet that holds both apportioned vehicles leaving the state and Indiana base-plated vehicles staying home is licensed entirely under IFTA.

Can an Indiana carrier file its fuel tax return on paper?

Only with a current online exemption. Motor carriers must manage IFTA, Motor Carrier Fuel Tax and Proportional Use Credit transactions in the Department of Revenue's Fuel Tax System, including filing and paying the quarterly return, renewing, and ordering additional decals. IC 6-6-4.1-10 backs that up by requiring reports to be filed and taxes remitted in an electronic format the department prescribes.

What does Indiana charge in IFTA penalties and interest?

Indiana does not publish a figure. IC 6-6-4.1-23 sets the late-filing penalty at the amount calculated under the penalty provisions of the International Fuel Tax Agreement, and IC 6-6-4.1-22 charges interest at the rate calculated under the agreement's interest provisions. Because both defer to the agreement rather than naming a number, no Indiana dollar amount or percentage exists to quote.