NJ Petroleum Gross Receipts Tax Rates

NJ Petroleum Gross Receipts Tax Rate Increase October 2016

The State of New Jersey is moving to increase the tax on motor fuels through a bill to increase the NJ Petroleum Gross Receipts Tax rate.
At present there are 3 separate taxes on fuels in New Jersey: the Federal Excise Tax, the NJ State Excise Tax and the NJ State Petroleum Gross Receipts Tax. It is the NJ Gross Receipts Tax (GRT) that lawmakers are currently working to update.
These 3 taxes are currently applied in different values for different fuel products.

RATES
The proposed changes will increase the NJ GRT by $0.23/gal for gasoline and by $0.27/gal for diesel fuels. These rates will be variable, adjusted quarterly by the NJ Board of Public Utility in an effort to ensure that the annual tax revenue yields the budgeted amount.

IMPLEMENTATION
The plan is to implement the gasoline tax on Nov. 1^st, and to phase in the diesel tax increase, applying $0.17 of the rate increase on Jan. 1 2017 and then applying the other $0.10 of the increase on Jul. 1 2017.

This tax increase will be applied to ‘floor stocks’, applying to fuel volumes held in inventory at enactment. Businesses will be required to take inventory at the close of business on the day of the enactment of the tax increase, and then will have 45 days to report their inventory, and another few weeks to pay the ‘floor tax’ on fuel in inventory. No specific information was available on how this will work. Tanks over 10,000 gallons are to exempt the first 400 gallons from tax and similarly the first 200 gallons for smaller tanks.

IMPACT TO FUEL SURCHARGING
For those who pay and/or charge fuel surcharges- many fuel surcharge formulas are based upon the Federal EIA reporting of the ‘local’ average fuel price. As such the increased tax burden on NJ businesses is not likely to translate fully in these fuel surcharge formulas. Most such formulas use PADD-1 or PADD-1B average costs, which calculate the average the price across 5+ states, only one of which will be increasing their tax rate.
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