April 26th...

Have to start paying road tax on my vegetable oil.

Every year, I send an email to the province saying that I am running WVO and would like to know what I should do about road taxes. I do this to protect myself from being seen as trying to skirt the law, and also because I think I SHOULD be paying road tax. I always use a general inquiries email address, and have never had a reply.

Well, this year I did get a reply:

Good afternoon Mr. Palmer,

This is in response to your email (below) of April 24, 2006, in which you advise that you are consuming cooking oil in your 1996 Volkswagen Jetta and are therefore inquiring on the imposition of the Provincial gasoline and motive fuel tax.

I must advise that the cooking oil that is used to power your 1996 Jetta is defined as "motive fuel" under the Gasoline and Motive Fuel Tax Act (the Act)."Motive fuel" means any gas fuel or liquid fuel that is not gasoline and that can be used for moving or operating any internal combustion engine or machine, or for heating and without restricting the generality of the foregoing includes kerosene, propane, natural gas, crude oil, distillate and other motor fuel, but does not include manufactured gas that
is used as a fuel. [Section 1 of the Act]

A consumer who acquires motive fuel in the province other than from a retailer and the tax has not been paid, must report and remit the tax to the Department [Subsection 6(3) of the Act]. Therefore, as a motive fuel, the cooking oil that is consumed in your 1996 Jetta is subject to the provincial gasoline and motive fuel tax rate of $0.169 per litre. As a result, you are required to self-assess tax on the volume of the cooking oil and remit it to the Minister of Finance.

Your tax payment (made payable to the Minister of Finance), along with a brief letter to account for the total volumes of motive fuel and tax due, must be provided to the Department on or before the 25th day of the month following the reporting period, which is done on a quarterly basis. Please note that the Department may change the reporting period based on the volumes of fuel reported and amount of tax remitted.Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions concerning the above.

So, looks like I'll start paying road tax. Not a biggie... I use about 32 litres/week so that only works out to a bit more thean $5/week.

Discussion here on the vegetable oil forum.