Under the existing licensing and taxing provisions, multi-jurisdictional carriers are required to license in and pay tax separately to each jurisdiction in which they travel. Under the International Registration Plan, a carrier is only required to license at its base jurisdiction. At the time of licensing, the carrier receives credentials and pays the annual fees and taxes required of all the IRP member jurisdictions in which it will travel. The base jurisdiction collects the fees and taxes on behalf of member jurisdictions. This considerably reduces the administrative costs for carriers in complying with the various licensing and tax requirements of the jurisdictions in which they travel.

However, the IRP program cannot accommodate the collection of a onetime tax. Therefore, to ensure that B.C. carriers and the province receive the full benefits of IRP membership, Bill 39 proposes amendments to the Social Service Tax Act which will replace the existing onetime 7 percent tax with an annual tax payable each year the vehicle is licensed for travel in the province. The annual tax rates have been set, on average, so that the total amount of tax paid over the lifetime of the vehicle is equal to the onetime 7 percent tax currently paid. This amendment is therefore revenue-neutral to British Columbia. In fact, over time the province may experience an increase in revenue, because IRP membership facilitates increased tax compliance from out-of-province-based carriers.

Bill 39 also makes a minor amendment to the Commercial Transport Act to exempt extraprovincially licensed trailers from the requirement to obtain a licence for travel in B.C. This parallels the exemption provided to extraprovincial trailers by IRP jurisdictions.

The proposed amendments benefit multi-jurisdictional carriers because they reduce the administrative costs of compliance with the licensing and tax requirements of the various jurisdictions in which they travel. Carriers will realize some of the tax relief because they will be paying the tax over the lifetime of the vehicle rather than paying the full tax at the time the vehicle is purchased or first licensed for use in the province. The proposal benefits the province because it ensures a vehicle will not be licensed for use in B.C. until the provincial tax is paid. It maintains current levels of tax revenues and ensures that the tax and the licensing fees are collected in an efficient and timely manner. This proposal will benefit the industry, the province and our economy. With that, I now move second reading of Bill 39.

In 1972, the province created two separate types of trailer licence plates; these being a standard “Commercial Trailer” plate which, since 1976, has been identifiable by a single letter suffix (which started at ‘V’).  The other was a “Trailer Floater” plate which has always included the name of the plate above the registration number (see example at bottom-left).