If you buy a special commodity permit for your truck, the Internal Revenue Service might try to pick your pocket.

Richard Jones, executive director of the Maine Motor Transport Association (MMTA), explained how a retroactive tax hike made by the IRS would affect many Maine truckers.

Several years ago, the federal government enacted a heavy vehicle use tax that applied to trucks with a gross vehicle weight (GVW) of 55,000 pounds or more. The tax starts at $100 for trucks weighing 55,000 pounds and increases to $550 for trucks weighing more than 75,000 pounds.

The government does extend a 25 percent reduction to logging and foreign vehicles. The latter are defined by IRS Form 2290 as those vehicles “that are registered in Canada or Mexico and are operated in the U.S.”

The heavy vehicle use tax does not extend to trucks that annually travel less than 5,000 miles (less than 7,500 miles for agricultural vehicles).

In the meantime, Maine once granted a legal tolerance for commodites like forest products, highway construction materials, and materials that required refrigeration. This tolerance permitted truck owners to operate their trucks legally to a specific weight beyond the base road limit.

The state required no written permits for these special commodities.

Jones said that beginning three years ago, “Maine attached an annual fee to the special commodities permits.” This fee ranged as high as $360 for a specific vehicle. Forced to pay — and pay well — for what had been essentially a free permit, truck owners justifiably complained.

Their complaints increased when police officers started writing summonses that did not take the permitted weight into consideration. The state based its schedule of fines on the “legal, unpermitted weight, and not on the permitted weight,” Jones said.

He explained that a truck might be permitted to carry 75,000 pounds. If a state trooper found the vehicle to weight 76,000 pounds, the fine would cover the weight as far down as the base road limit, not to the 75,000 pounds set by the special commodities permit.

“We’re talking a big difference in the fine,” Jones said. “We’re talking about fairness under the law. Truckers figured they paid more to haul the extra weight, so why shouldn’t it be considered when they exceeded it?”

The MMTA helped truck owners press their claim with the Maine Legislature, which subsequently abolished the fees for special commodities permits. Instead, truck owners pay $2 for processing each permit.

“The Legislature felt this step removed the argument about the weight differential,” Jones said. “It caused the fines to revert to the base road limit.”

The Maine Legislature no sooner abolished the fee schedule, then the IRS decided that the federal heavy vehicle use tax must apply to any weight granted by a Maine special commodities permit.

This decision would make some vehicles eligible for the heavy vehicle use tax for the first time and would push other vehicles into a heavier and more expensive category, Jones said.

He pointed out that a three- or four-axle forest-products truck with a road limit of 54,000 pounds would not qualify for the heavy vehicle use tax. If the truck were permitted to carry an additional 10 percent (5,400 pounds), it would then have a GVW of 59,500 pounds.

The IRS would require the owner to pay a $157.50 tax, or 75 percent of the normal $210 tax.

To compound the expense of its decision, the IRS has decided that it will collect the heavy vehicle use tax retroactive to Jan. 1, 1989.

Truck owners affected by the decision must pay more than two years in back taxes.

“Hurts? You bet it hurts!” Jones growled. A conservative estimate places the amount of tax owed by Maine truck owners at $750,000, he said. The owners of three- and four-axle trucks would be most affected.

To add insult to injury, “indications are that out-of-state vehicles that purchase special commodities permits in Maine” will not be affected by the IRS decision, Jones said. Since not all states issue such permits, not all trucks will be affected across the United States.

“We’re not alone in this,” he said. “The IRS has indicated that New Hampshire’s 5 percent statutory weight tolerance will be reviewed as well.

“Helluva deal for Maine truckers,” Jones rumbled. “One more indication of how the government messes things up for the trucking industry.”

To add insult to injury, Jones believes that the IRS has requested from the Maine Division of Motor Vehicles a list of everyone who has purchased a special commodity permit since Jan. 1, 1989.

The MMTA appealed the IRS decision to the American Trucking Association and the American Pulpwood Association, “apparently without any effect,” Jones said. Both those organizations “feel there isn’t anything that can be done.”

An alternative “is to appeal to the Maine Congressional delegation,” he said.