NACS joined fellow trade associations including the American Trucking Association; NATSO, Representing America’s Travel Centers and Truck Stops; SIGMA: America’s Leading Fuel Marketers; and Truckload Carriers Association, in penning a letter to Assistant Secretary of Tax Policy Aviva Aron-Dine and IRS Commissioner Daniel I. Werfel about the Section 45Z tax credit.

In the letter, the associations highlighted essential considerations for maximizing the consumer and climate benefits of the tax credit while also minimizing unnecessary cost increases to consumers.

“Specifically, we encourage the Agencies to ensure that (i) the distinct lifecycle emissions modeling schemes for aviation and non-aviation fuels meet their respective statutory requirements, (ii) consumers can access the value of the 45Z Credit, and (iii) the 45Z Credit imposes minimal inflationary pressure on retail fuel prices,” the letter wrote.

The letter continued on, advocating for the Treasury and the IRS to mitigate the 45Z Credit’s impact on retail fuel prices while maximizing the policy’s environmental impact. This included the clarity of the tax credit that each biofuel gets respectively to avoid higher fuel prices, assigning precise credit values of fuels from different production facilities and more.

“Section 45Z also makes clear that the modeling provided for aviation and non-aviation fuels by Treasury and the IRS must be separate and distinct from one another … Any impending guidance that fails to explicitly designate distinct, more rigorous modeling for aviation fuels will likely be found to be inconsistent with the IRA,” the letter wrote.