Jobber Sued For Not Passing Through Refiner's Ethanol Tax Credit To Dealers

摘要

Two dealers in Connecticut are suing a jobber for breach of contract and fraud - they say he charged them 18.4cts/gal in federal excise tax for three years and never passed through to them the 5.1 cts/gal ethanol tax credit he received from his branded suppliers. No federal law actually requires a jobber to pass down the chain any ethanol tax credits he receives from suppliers, says Patrick Kelly, a fuels associate with the American Petroleum Institute. But refiners, jobbers, marketer lawyers and a leading tax attorney say the Connecticut retailers raise an interesting question where jobber purchases of pre-blended E10 are concerned. If the jobber charged the dealers 18.4cts/gal federal tax but paid his supplier only 13.3cts tax because of the ethanol credit, did he overcharge the retailers? The dealers allege that he did, unjustly enriching himself at their expense by misrepresenting the amount of federal tax they owed, defrauding them and failing to deal with them in good faith.