Indiana State Highway Reciprocity Study

The report evaluates the fiscal impact of Indiana's joining the International Registration Plan (IRP). The analysis involved both the revenue impact and the impact on the trucking industry. The major finding of the study is that there would be little revenue gain if Indiana joined IRP without a truck tax restructuring, and possibly a loss if only Indiana miles are counted in base-mile ratio computation. In order to assess the fiscal impact of Indiana's joining IRP, the net effect of two revenue streams was considered. First, an estimate was made of how much of the current registration revenue collected by Indiana from its resident interstate carriers with vehicles of 26,000 lb. or more will be lost due to IRP. Then the expected registration revenue from carriers based in the current IRP member jurisdictions who operate in Indiana was estimated. The estimation of fees related to the resident carriers was done on the basis of information gathered through a random sample survey of the carriers. A statistically sampled mail survey was sent to 3,170 of Indiana's home-based carriers, stratified by fleet size. A 29.3% response rate provided statistically reliable information on truck type and mileage of Indiana operators. In order to estimate incoming revenue from out-of-state carriers under the IRP, data from several state records were used. These primarily included the motor fuel use tax records and indefinite situs tax records. In addition, the IRP recap data for nine states from the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators and data from several other jurisdictions were used.