Posted on 05/09/2008 11:13:02 AM PDT by bruinbirdman
Diesel owners who switch to cooking grease can run afoul of the law. Just ask the governor.
Dave Eck, a Half Moon Bay mechanic, had attracted a media spotlight with his fleet of vehicles fueled by used fryer grease from a local chowder house. So when Sacramento called, he figured officials wanted advice on promoting alternative fuels.
Not at all. The government rang to notify Eck that he was a tax cheat. He was scolded for failing to get a "diesel fuel supplier's license," reporting quarterly how many gallons of grease he burns, and paying a tax on each gallon.
All of a sudden they nailed me for a road tax," said Eck, who drives a Hummer converted to run on vegetable oil. "I said, 'Not a problem. I'll do my part. But what do I get? At least let me into the carpool lane.' "
No such luck. The state offered Eck only a potentially large fine -- and not just for failing to pay taxes. He can also get in trouble for carting kitchen grease away from eateries without a license from the state Meat and Poultry Inspection Branch.
Or for not having at least $1 million in liability insurance, in case he spills some of the stuff. Or for not getting permission from the state Air Resources Board to burn fat in the first place. . . .
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Land of the free...Home of the brave...
Can you say Government control? If you do not think our government is out of control, read the article again. Every license listed is a TAX.
Another reason to get out of Kalifornistan.
Nice move, California socialist totalitarians.
You just murdered the alternate fuel industry in your state.
Just when you needed it the most.
Not just California. IIRC, this recently happened to a fellow in North Carolina too.
This is why the 2nd amendment is so darn important.
The water is boiling.
Liberal asshattery at its finest. Proof positive that the left doesn’t give a good g. d. about the environment or saving energy, it is all about control and power and sucking money out of the people to fatten the state.
Time to scream bloody murder at the idiot rulers of this tinpot state of mine. *fume*
Remember, boys and girls, Government is not the solution, Government is the problem.
Green = The color of money..................
Question for you...
Which will get you more time in Jail...growing tobacco or growing marijuana?
You already know the answer.
There's a reason for that, Mr. Tiffany. It's YOU!............
It’s illegal to grow tobacco?..........
Without a federal quota permit you will do jail time!!
Too many people brewing their own biodiesel are far, far too quick to trumpet their achievement with a bumper sticker or other advertisement.
My advice to anyone creating ANY of their own on-road fuel (diesel or gasoline) is to Shut The **&^ Up!
Just don’t tell anyone.
The penalties for burning un-taxed diesel fuel on highways is very high. It goes even higher if they find out you have a storage tank of untaxed fuel at your home or place of business. You will be fined according to your storage capacity.
I can’t remember how many bio-diesel advocates I’ve had to tell this to. Too many of them want to “stick it to the man” (or some other hippy bumper-sticker mentality). I’ve had to tell them that “the man” can stick it to them much, much harder than they’re ever going to stick it back to “the man.” I’m wishing them success and achievement in their efforts, but they have to keep a low profile. The government hates it when people get out of line.
Where do I get one?.....And what about a Federal permit to grow mari,...er, uh....cannabis sativa........plants?...
In Tennessee you need to register with the state and get an allotment; only alloted properties are eligible; planting anywhere else is illegal.
Sort of like a taxi permit in NYC.
IOW, Damn Near Impossible...............
Everyone else who uses the roads pays the tax.
My advice is not to ride on everyone elses’s back by using the facilities without paying your share for them.
This is done through BATF
I would assume the marijuana is the same as tobacco. Somebody has to supply the “medical” market, and this is beneath big Pharma.
Here in FLorida, Alcohol (not beer and wine, but hard stuff) licenses are worth more than gold. They are sold in a lottery type set up. I forget what they cost, but it’s like $100K years ago. Getting one, when they go up for sale, like once a decade is like winning the lottery.......
You see, it isn’t what you do that bothers the busy-bodies. Its doing it without them telling you to do it. Dave didn’t ask permission, he didn’t consult with them first, and most importantly he didn’t cut them in on the action.
He acted like a free human being, and that infuriates certain kinds of people.
That’s not what the authorities want. They want people who produce their own fuel to pay up for a whole host of other taxes, regulatory licenses, storage insurance, double-walled tanks, blah, blah, blah.
Once you file a form to pay the tax on fuel you’ve made yourself, you open a bureaucrat’s wet dream in a pandora’s box. You can’t pay “just the fuel road tax” in most states.
Further, if you look at states like Oregon, where there are a high number of people driving hybrids and other type of greenie cars, they’re now investigating a GPS-driven mileage system, because they see any fuel economy you achieve as tax evasion. Nice bit of double-talk by the bureaucrats there too.
This happened in the UK several years back, guy was pursued for tax evasion just for filling up his own van with waste veggie oil. It makes sense that the idiotic, bureaucratic socialism of this caliber would creep over here, and of course first in the Socialist Republic of Kalifornia.
In the 70’s a group of us that carpooled checked into converting a car to run on methanol. The state, Mississippi, didn’t mind as long as we paid the road tax. The stopper was the quantity (5,000 gal) needed to get enough of a price break to make it worthwhile. The problem then became insurance for storage of that much alcohol.
FWIW, PA used to not tax fuel for external combustion engines. Don’t know if that’s changed. Most lawyers that work for state legislatures don’t know the difference or potential. When they write the code for the law they leave a huge loophole.
I get so irritated at these guys who think outside the box, convert their diesels to run on WVO/Biodiesel, and then can’t keep their mouth shut about it, thereby bringing the full fury of the various state revenue and environmental agencies down on themselves and ruining it for everyone else.
Morons!
External Combustion?
Usually having the fire on the outside of the engine is a sign of a very short operating life of the vehicle.
Happening here in OHio, too!
The ‘notices’ haven’t arrived but they’re ‘collecting’ information.
Yet one more reason to fly under the RADAR..........
Didn’t they, the Feds, do that with barley or hops, at least back in the 1970s?
Once a year we have here in western Pa, a show featuring steam powered machinery at least a century old, from bailers through bulldozers and tractors which are still in good operating conditions, not an external combustion engine but combustion takes place outside the engine.
Probably a lobbying holdover from the days of PA being a major coal and railroad state.
“Everyone else who uses the roads pays the tax.
My advice is not to ride on everyone elses’s back by using the facilities without paying your share for them.”
You owe me money for using my internet...
*snicker*
After I posted I wonder if it could be for Stanley Steamers. Not a significant fuel (tax) source so why not.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/external%20combustion
Al Gore, is that you posting here?
The ultimate goal of the Political Correctors is to so tie us up in minutia that we cannot advance any of our agenda. All the while freely advancing theirs.
This has GOT to stop!
There's a reason why they left that particular money on the table, and it ain't the amount.
Heck, Limbaugh was criticizing the Ohio(?) legislature for raiding all but $30M of their tobacco settlement money for spending on things not related to giving up smoking.
How terminally stupid does a person have to be not to figure out that this will happen?
It's just a question of when. And it will always be retroactive, probably with penalties.
I’ll send a check to Al Gore...
Yes, I know. There was a case in my state.
I only object to the non payment of road taxes.
Besides, as soon as the idea gets popular, the fuel will be taxed just like other fuels are. It will become a commodity just like any other fuel. Restaurants will quit giving it away, too. They will realize that they can sell it when and if the market for the used oil becomes large enough.
Heck, if I owned a restaurant that used a lot of cooking oil, I’d probably turn it into biodiesel myself and sell it if the local demand was strong enough. Since I already pay taxes as a restaurant anyway, I can just add another item for my accountant to keep track of and pay.
http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2007/10/23/news/business/story1.txt
There’s the real reason. The state wants to run the biofuel business, and it doesn’t want competition.
Which was bound to happen when enough people wanted to use biodiesel.
There are some advanced aircraft engine designs that use external combustion, but I wouldn’t want to be behind one in traffic.
“...and then can’t keep their mouth shut about it...”
But that’s half the motivation for some of these people, telling folks how much better they are than the rest of us, notwithstanding that fryer grease isn’t sustainable as fuel if more than a few people do it.
And of course the state would rather put you in jail at $40k/year than miss out on a few dollars in tax revenue.
Solely external or internal and external?
LMAO...
“Al Gore, is that you posting here?”
No...I’m John Edwards, channeling Al Gore’s dead babies, killed by global warming.....
I’m not sure. Rumor has it that it’s what powers the Aurora spyplane as evidenced by the “knots on a rope” contrails it supposedly leaves.
My advice is not to ride on everyone elses’s back by using the facilities without paying your share for them. In my state, the state fuel taxes the federal fuel tax.
Then they dump the cash into the state slush general fund, so they can spend it on hookers, defense counsel for corrupt politicians and welfare.
Every once in a while they grudgingly disburse some of the money to the various bothersome county road commissions, who are always whining about not having any money to fix the roads...
buzzbomb
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