[Hey, I nearly forgot to remind readers to see if they can get a fuel tax refund! Oh well, better late than never. —Tim]
Boat owners learn to accept the many innovative and unexpected ways devised to extract money from their wallets. It’s just part of the deal. But they may not know how to react when confronted with an opportunity to get some of that money back; particularly money from the government. In other words, tax money.
I know, it seems unlikely. But it’s true. Maybe you already knew about this, but it was news to me when it was explained by one of my fellow tenants at the marina. It turns out that in many states, boaters can apply for a refund of a portion of the taxes they pay on fuel. The justification: those taxes are for road and highway infrastructure, which boats don’t use.
So which states offer the refund? BoatUS’s Government Affairs Department keeps track of this sort of thing. They have an entire page devoted to the state fuel tax refund. The bad news is that only ten states are listed: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska (they have navigable water in Nebraska?!), North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.
“Save your receipts!” was the advice I received. Um…OK. I save receipts anyway, at least for a few weeks, but now I’ll start stowing them in a special fuel receipt envelope. At the end of the year, I’ll fill out a form and send them all in to the appropriate agency. Then…just sit back and wait for my rebate check to arrive.
OK, it may not be a lot. But if it takes me two hours of effort over the course of the year, and it nets me $100 or so… Well, let’s just say that it’s a better return on investment than fishing!
