Prepaid Sales Tax and Sales of Fuel (Publication 82)
Records

Business records

The law requires that you maintain complete and adequate records of all business transactions in support of any tax returns you have filed. These records may be examined by a CDTFA team member to verify the accuracy of your returns. If you do not keep adequate and complete records, we may assess penalties against you.

The records that you maintain should include all those generally expected of the typical supplier, wholesaler, or service station. In addition to summary records, you should retain all sales invoices, purchase invoices, and any documents which support the returns you have filed and are used to record your operations. For more information, please see Regulation 1698, Records, which details the type of records you should keep.

Reconciliation of reported amounts

To ensure that tax credits have been properly claimed, we routinely compare the amounts claimed by retailers on Schedule G to the sales reported on the MVF Pre-Collection returns filed by their suppliers and wholesalers. Any discrepancies or differences between the records of suppliers and retailers will be examined in detail and may result in an audit.

Please note: Retailers can prevent many discrepancies by properly claiming the tax credit in the period in which the purchase was made (generally, the period in which the purchase invoice date is included).