IFTA in Alberta: How to File and Stay Compliant

Alberta's Tax and Revenue Administration (TRA), part of Treasury Board and Finance, administers IFTA for carriers based in the province. Registration costs $15, and decals cost $10 per set, two decals per qualified motor vehicle, both due at initial licensing and again at each annual renewal.

Once approved, a carrier manages its account through TRACS, the province's online IFTA portal, where the license itself becomes available after approval and decals are mailed out, unless an order of 250 or more sets specifically requests courier delivery.

Alberta opens annual renewal on October 15 and closes it December 31, a defined window rather than a rolling deadline tied to the license's own anniversary. Missing it doesn't mean starting over immediately: carriers can still reactivate an account in TRACS after December 31, but a license left inactive for more than four years has to be re-applied for as a new registration instead of renewed.

That renewal window is worth calendaring separately from the standard quarterly filing deadlines, since it runs on its own annual clock and has nothing to do with any single quarter's return.

Quarterly returns follow the same schedule used across every IFTA member jurisdiction: April 30, July 31, October 31, and January 31, each pushed to the next business day when it lands on a weekend or holiday. Mileage and fuel records supporting those returns need to be kept for four years from the due date or filing date, whichever is later, per the shared IFTA Procedures Manual rather than any Alberta-specific rule.

For carriers running mixed routes across Alberta, British Columbia, and south into the US, GPS-verified jurisdiction-crossing data removes the manual reconstruction work that a quarterly return otherwise demands, and gives TRA exactly the kind of records it expects to see if a return is ever questioned.

Alberta's combined $15 registration and $10-per-set decal fee sits well below British Columbia's $300 new-applicant fee and $100 annual renewal, and roughly in line with Quebec's $70 license plus $14.10-per-pair decal cost, even though the two provinces structure their fees differently. For a fleet operating on both sides of the Alberta-BC border, that cost gap alone is a reason to keep each province's credentials and renewal dates tracked separately rather than assuming a similar process or price on both sides.