Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a new fuel tax law that aims to improve the cash flow for petroleum distributors. The law will benefit small business operators selling heating oil and highway diesel motor fuels by letting them pay their fuel taxes later, Cuomo said.
Petroleum distributors usually buy their supplies in bulk and store them at New-York based fuel terminals for months before they are distributed. In the past, distributors had to pay the fuel taxes up front, but now they can pay fuel taxes once the supplies are loaded onto fuel trucks and removed from the storage terminal.
“Before, the distributor had to pre-pay all that tax upfront, but couldn”™t collect it until a sale was made, which might be many months down the road,” said Thomas J. Peters, CEO of the Empire State Petroleum Association (ESPA), in a written statement. “It”™s a question of improving a business”™s cash position ”“ and this is a cash flow victory.”
ESPA, a trade association representing 300 petroleum marketers in New York, estimated that petroleum marketers supply 2.6 million households in New York with heating oil service and provide gas and diesel fuel for 8.4 million registered automobiles and 1.3 million trucks and buses statewide.
How can the governor pass a law? Isn’t that something the state legislature does?