Rebate on Kerosene

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I thought I would pass this along: The Feds recently slapped an excise tax on kerosene for most business uses. Home users are not required to pay this tax. So now there are two colors of kerosene, clear (for business) and red (for tax exempt). If you buy clear kerosene for home use, you will pay a 24.3 cent per gallon excise tax. You can save the taxes one of two ways - either buy the red kerosene, or buy the clear stuff and submit a Form 8849 to the IRS to claim a refund.

From what I've read, the lamp and heater manufacturers don't know if the dye will have any negative effects on their products. They are hoping not. The real advantage to buying the clear kerosene is that it's possible to guage the quality based on clarity. In my case, I bought the clear, because that was all the oil company had, and they were cheaper than anyone else. The woman I talked to there explained the excise tax to me. In fact she even sent me the tax form by mail. If you can't get one of these, you can download one from the IRS along with instructions at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/ They're in .PDF format, so you'll need Adobe Acrobat. (download from www.adobe.com)

-- Mike (gartner@execpc.com), September 25, 1998

Answers

Golly sheesh Mike I will do just that!

At first I thought you were just talking about the difference between #2 fuel oil (which is tax-free for farm users) and diesel fuel. That was like, oh, ho-hum, we'd let our friends pump from the tax-free pump. But there was no RED DYE --- holy moly.

When I realized you were talking about red dye in kerosene for home consumers -- sounds like the beginning of another bunch of Congressmen and Senators getting harrased to hell by some guy from Greenville NC, and rightly so

-- John Howard (Greenville, NC) (pcdir@prodigy.net), September 26, 1998.


Actually, now I'm not sure if the tax was always there for businesses or not. I'm new to this whole thing. I guess Uncle Sam had a problem with people saying they wanted the stuff for personal use, and using it for business. He was missing out on his $$$. The folks at the oil company seemed to think the Feds would probably lift the tax soon because it's more work than it's worth. Since they don't sell that much kerosene for home use, they decided to handle the clear stuff, and let customers know they could get a refund on the tax.

I gotta say, they were very kind, very patient and very helpful. That kind of service is getting hard to find.

-- Mike (gartner@execpc.com), September 26, 1998.


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