IFTA & compliance

Your ELD's IFTA report will get your return filed. It will not get you through an audit.

October 6, 2026 · 7 min read · Mileage Reports

Most owner-operators and fleets file IFTA the same way now: open the ELD, run the IFTA report, copy the miles by state onto the return. For filing, that works. The return asks for totals, and the ELD has totals.

An audit is a different question. The auditor is not asking what your miles were. They are asking you to prove it, truck by truck and trip by trip, for every quarter they pick, going back as far as four years. Every month we get calls from carriers who have just received that letter and need help putting the records together. Some call in time. Some call when the ELD account is closed, the provider has changed, or the data simply was never kept, and there is not enough left to rebuild the miles.

Here is why an ELD's IFTA report is not an audit file, what the auditor actually asks for, and what it costs when you cannot produce it.

The rules: what IFTA says your records must show

IFTA's recordkeeping rules are in its Procedures Manual, section P500. Four parts of it decide audits:

You keep the records four years. Records must be kept four years from the date the return was due or filed, whichever is later (P510).
The burden of proof is on you. "In an IFTA audit, the burden of proof is on the licensee." The auditor works from the best information available, and if that is not yours, it is theirs (P520).
The records have to be auditable. They must let the auditor verify the distance travelled and evaluate how your mileage system works. Records in a form the auditor cannot audit count as not made available (P530).
Trip-level detail. For each trip: the beginning and ending dates, origin and destination, route of travel, beginning and ending odometer, total distance, distance in each jurisdiction, and the unit number (P540.100). That is the Individual Vehicle Mileage Record, the IVMR.

Since January 2024, records from a GPS or vehicle tracking system have a stricter standard of their own (P540.200): a reading at least every 10 minutes while the engine is on, each with the date and time, latitude and longitude to four decimal places, and the ECM odometer, and all of it in a spreadsheet format such as CSV or Excel. A PDF, a screenshot or a Word file from the tracking system is not acceptable.

Where the ELD's IFTA report falls short

The ELD was built for hours of service, not for fuel tax. Its IFTA report is a by-product, and in an audit that shows.

It is a summary. Miles by state for the quarter is the number on your return. It is not the evidence for it. The auditor wants the trips underneath, and the readings underneath the trips.
The ELD rule records location far less often. Federal rules require an ELD to record location at each change of duty status and at least every 60 minutes while driving, at a precision of about one mile, and only within about ten miles during personal conveyance. IFTA's standard for tracking data is every 10 minutes, to four decimal places. A device that meets the ELD rule can still leave you short of the IFTA one.
It is only kept six months. The ELD rule requires carriers to keep records of duty status and supporting documents for six months. IFTA audits reach back four years. Unless someone exported and kept the detail, the older quarters are not there.
Changing providers loses history. When a fleet moves from one ELD to another, the old provider's data often goes with the old contract. Many owner-operators found this out when they moved trucks to a new ELD, and the old account was closed before anything was exported.
Exports are often PDFs. Many ELD portals export the IFTA report as a PDF or a printed summary. Under P540.200 that is exactly the format the auditor will not accept for tracking data.
The gaps are real. A device unplugged for a day, a truck driven without a driver logged in, an odometer the device could not read from the engine, a dead zone: each leaves miles the summary may still count but nothing on record can prove.

None of this is a problem until an auditor asks. Then all of it is.

What happens when the records are not adequate

If the base jurisdiction decides your records are not adequate, or you produce nothing after a written demand, IFTA requires an additional assessment (P570):

your reported fleet miles per gallon is cut to 4.00 MPG, or
your reported average is reduced by 20%,

on top of any tax-paid credit taken away for fuel receipts that do not hold up, and interest on what is owed. The auditor can also suspend or revoke the license.

Here is what that means for one truck running 100,000 miles a year at 6.5 MPG. It burns about 15,400 gallons. At 4.00 MPG the auditor says it burned 25,000: about 9,600 more taxable gallons. At an illustrative 40 cents a gallon in fuel tax, that is around $3,800 a year for one truck before interest. An audit usually covers several years, and every truck in the fleet. Even the gentler 20% cut, to 5.2 MPG, adds about 3,800 gallons, around $1,500 a truck a year.

Compare that with what it costs to have the records ready.

Why the time to build an IVMR is now, not after the letter

Mileage records can be rebuilt after the fact, but only from data that still exists. Every month the carriers who call us after an audit notice fall into two groups:

the ones whose readings were kept, where we can rebuild the IVMRs the auditor asked for, and
the ones whose ELD account was closed, whose provider kept six months, or whose trucks went weeks without data, where some of those miles can no longer be proved.

The difference between the two groups is not how careful they were on the road. It is whether anyone kept the detail while it was still available.

What Mileage Reports does

Mileage Reports keeps each truck's IFTA records continuously, not once a quarter:

Pulls readings from your ELD (Motive, PeopleNet, Omnitracs, XRS and others) and keeps them, with the date and time, state, odometer, location, route and coordinates, long after the ELD's six months are up.
Builds an IVMR for every truck: trip by trip, with the dates, the route, the odometer at the start and end, the miles in each state and the unit number, the trip-level detail of P540.100.
Keeps the underlying readings exportable as CSV or as PDF: CSV is the spreadsheet format P540.200 asks for, and the PDF IVMR is the report you hand over.
Checks every truck every week for missing days, odometers that jump or go backwards, and miles that do not add up, and fills the gaps from your trips and settlements while it can still be done.
Gets your IFTA miles ready each quarter from the same records, so the numbers on your return are the numbers your IVMRs prove.

If the audit letter comes, the records are already there: by truck, by trip, for every quarter, in the format the auditor wants.

Do not wait for the letter

An IFTA audit is not a question of whether you paid the right tax. It is a question of whether you can prove it. Your ELD will get your return filed. Make sure something will get you through the audit.

Start your free month and we will begin keeping your trucks' records today, or book a short demo and we will show you the IVMRs for your own trucks.

Sources: IFTA Procedures Manual, sections P510 to P570 (January 2026 edition, iftach.org); FMCSA electronic logging device rule, 49 CFR Part 395 (location recording, precision and six-month retention). Fuel tax rates vary by state and quarter; the cost example is an illustration, not a quote.