IFTA Fuel Tax Calculator
The arithmetic itself, for one quarter.
OpenIFTA Reporting Software Compared
The three ways carriers actually do this, compared on the work each one removes rather than on feature lists. No prices are quoted here: fuel-tax tools are sold per truck per month on contracts, and a figure written today would be wrong by the time you read it.
What does not change is the arithmetic. Whichever you choose, the return still needs total miles, jurisdiction miles, total gallons and tax-paid gallons, and the audit still asks for the receipts.
- Best at one truck
- Spreadsheet
- Best at five
- ELD add-on
- Best at twenty
- Dedicated platform
The matrix
| Criterion | Spreadsheet | ELD add-on | Dedicated platform |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jurisdiction miles | You split them | From GPS, automatically | From GPS or import |
| Fuel receipts | Manual entry | Manual or card import | Card and card-network import |
| Rate table | You maintain it | Maintained for you | Maintained for you |
| Files the return | No | Sometimes | Usually |
| Audit trail | As good as your discipline | Good | Strong |
| Cost at one truck | Nothing | Bundled with the ELD | Hard to justify |
| Hours per quarter | 4-8 | 1-2 | Under 1 |
Spreadsheet
At one truck this is genuinely fine, and it is what our own calculator replaces. The cost is four to eight hours a quarter and the risk is transcription: a jurisdiction split done by memory at the end of the quarter is exactly the record an audit disallows.
ELD add-on
You are already running an ELD because 2017-12-18 happened. It already knows where the truck was. Turning that into jurisdiction miles is close to free at the margin, and it removes the single most error-prone input. This is the answer for most small fleets and the reason the shaded column is shaded.
Dedicated platform
Worth it when fuel-card imports, multiple ELD vendors across a mixed fleet, or actual filing on your behalf start to matter — which is usually somewhere north of fifteen or twenty trucks. Below that you are paying for an integration problem you do not have.
Before you buy
- Ask whether the rate table is updated every quarter, and by whom.
- Ask what happens to jurisdiction miles when the GPS drops out for an hour.
- Ask whether reefer and auxiliary fuel are separable from tractor fuel.
- Ask how you export four years of records if you leave.
- Ask whether it produces the IRP distance figures too — same data, second use.
Sources
- International Fuel Tax Agreement — Procedures Manualread 2026-09-04