Law Center Search Results

The NAM is a member of the Mobile Machinery Coalition, which, along with the Edison Electric Institute, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the American Gas Association, filed an amicus brief 10/24/03 supporting a challenge to a lower court interpretation that certain very heavy mobile equipment (with attached pintle hooks) is subject to substantial highway excise taxes. On 7/8/04, the Court ruled that there is no exemption from excise taxes for heavy mobile equipment with pintle hooks. Many pieces of mobile equipment are affected, including electric utility maintenance equipment, digger derricks, concrete pumpers and well-servicing equipment. The ruling affects not only annual excise taxes, but also federal fuel excise taxes, a twelve percent retail excise tax, and an excise tax on replacement tires, with a combined annual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to industry. The Mobile Machinery Coalition is working on a legislative solution to this problem.