IFTA requires you to track four categories of data for every qualified vehicle in your fleet: miles driven per jurisdiction, fuel purchased per jurisdiction (including gallons and total cost), vehicle unit numbers, and trip dates. Every mile and every gallon needs to be tied to the state or province where it was driven or purchased. Rounding or estimating doesn’t work here. The numbers need to be precise and backed up by documentation.

Miles driven per jurisdiction is the core of IFTA reporting. Every trip needs to show where you entered and exited each state or province, with odometer readings at each crossing. This is how fuel tax gets allocated across jurisdictions. If you drove 40% of your miles in Arizona and 30% in California, those states get their proportional share of fuel tax revenue. Miss a border crossing or fudge an odometer reading and the whole calculation falls apart.

Fuel purchases need the same level of detail. For every fill-up, you need the date, jurisdiction where you fueled, number of gallons, price per gallon, and total cost. Each purchase also needs the vehicle unit number tied to it. Bulk fuel drawn from your own tanks counts too and requires the same documentation.

IFTA returns are filed quarterly with these deadlines: Q1 is due April 30, Q2 is due July 31, Q3 is due October 31, and Q4 is due January 31. Missing a deadline triggers penalties and interest. But the bigger risk is what happens when you’re not compliant at all. Penalties for non-compliance range from $1,000 to $16,000, and auditors can issue immediate out-of-service orders. That means your trucks sit until the problem is resolved. For a trucking or freight company, trucks not moving is revenue not earned.

A common misconception is that ELD data handles IFTA for you. Your electronic logging device tracks hours of service and location, which can support your mileage claims during an audit. But ELDs don’t automatically generate IFTA-compliant reports. You still need to maintain separate fuel records, match purchases to jurisdictions, and compile everything into the quarterly return format. Relying on ELD data alone will leave gaps that hurt you during an audit.

The practical challenge is that drivers are focused on driving, not paperwork. But IFTA compliance depends on data captured in real time. Fuel cards from companies like Comdata or EFS capture purchase location, gallons, and cost automatically, which eliminates most manual tracking on the fuel side. Pair that with GPS or ELD mileage data organized by jurisdiction and you have a solid foundation for accurate filings.

Keep all supporting documentation for at least four years. IFTA auditors can go back that far, and they will request trip sheets, fuel receipts, and ELD logs. If you can’t produce them, the auditor estimates your liability. Those estimates almost never work in your favor.

If you’re running a smaller fleet and handling IFTA alongside everything else, the quarterly filing process eats up hours you could spend on operations. Having professional bookkeeping services that understand trucking means your IFTA data stays organized alongside your regular books, so quarterly returns are just a matter of compiling records that are already in order rather than a scramble every three months.