Out at Home

Starting Oct. 1, 2003, carriers will need an office and at least one employee working there to establish a home base for purposes of vehicle registration under the International Registration Plan.

New rules adopted last month by IRP Inc., which governs the multi-jurisdiction reciprocity system, say there must be a physical structure located within the base jurisdiction that is owned, leased, or rented by the fleet registrant.

The change comes following complaints and threatened sanctions against Oklahoma which forced that state to tighten its base-state qualifications for carrier registrants. Several jurisdictions contend that truckers have been allowed to use the addresses of third-party registration agents to establish Oklahoma as their base registration state in order to avoid higher sales and other vehicle taxes in their own jurisdictions.

Many of those truckers, or their agents, packed first-year estimates with mileage from low-fee jurisdictions.

The fight was led by Illinois, which says it is owed $15.5 million US by Oklahoma for lost registration fees.

The new IRP rules state that a structure must be designated by a street number or road location and must be open during normal business hours. A post office box is not sufficient. The office must have a telephone listing in the name of the fleet registrant, and at least one permanent employee conducting the fleet’s trucking-related business at that location.

IRP failed to adopt two other proposed changes regarding owner-operators. One would have changed the definition of owner-operator to “a registrant who apportions not more than one power unit or power unit and trailer.” Currently an owner-operator is defined as someone who leases his equipment, with driver, to a carrier.

The second would have allowed IRP jurisdictions to let owner-operator registrants use a street address and telephone number to establish a base state, as they do now, but would have required proof that the owner-operator owns, leases or rents a structure (including a residence) within that jurisdiction, and would have required a telephone listing in the owner-operator’s name.