On Tuesday as per the message below, we gave the UCR Board three business days to avoid a class action lawsuit for negligently --if not knowingly or willfully-- blocking carriers' ability to pay UCR by requiring they enter the last 4 digits of their tax ID number, when it has become evident that their vendor's system doesn't always work due to technical deficiencies.
Later that day, the UCR Board Chairman called our legal team and agreed to disable the feature by Friday to allow all carriers to file before the April 1st deadline. Starting tomorrow, all carriers and third-party filers will now be required to enter their USDOT Number twice to ensure they are paying on the correct USDOT number account to avoid unnecessary refund requests.
Carriers will now have 30 days to comply.
Dear Permitting Service:
You are receiving this email because you are a permitting service that regularly receives emails from the Unified Carrier Registration ("UCR") Board of Directors in furtherance of your business of filing Unified Carrier Registration on behalf of your motor carrier clients. Certain Federal and State motor carrier enforcement and regulatory officials who deal with UCR are also being copied on this email for their information.
Please note the Small Business in Transportation Coalition ("SBTC") is a 510(c)(6) non-profit industry "watchdog" trade group representing truckers, small carriers, brokers, forwarders and industry suppliers.
We are not affiliated with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the UCR Board or its agents.
As you know, since October 1, 2018, the UCR Board --through its new technical platform vendor SeikoSoft --is now requiring carriers and third parties such as permitting services for the first time to enter the last four digits of their carrier clients' tax identification numbers in addition to their USDOT Numbers to effect UCR filings, purportedly for "security" reasons. During SeikoSoft's training session held earlier this year for permitting services, the permitting services industry was led to believe the only exception to needing to enter the last four Tax ID digits is if the filer has been issued either a state government admin account or permitting service user account.
Scores of permitting services relied on this representation and have now incurred financial losses.
SBTC has discovered that many carriers cannot be filed because the original Tax ID data collection method was faulty; that is, without two-step verification, which is usually implemented as a matter of standard security professional industry protocol. As a result, digits have been transposed, causing mismatch, denial of UCR filings, industry-wide confusion and chaos.
Worse, we have now learned that SeikoSoft's systems have not been properly pulling carriers' data from USDOT systems in some cases skipping numbers, causing mass numbers of carriers not to be able to be filed. Permitting services are therefore not able to file many of their clients and these carriers cannot file on their own due to the technical deficiencies. SeikoSoft is refusing to comment further because this is now a legal matter.
The SBTC has filed a complaint with the USDOT Inspector General and has advised Congressional oversight committees through our lobbyist. But is appears litigation will now be necessary.
Due to the UCR Board's cancellation of its February Board meeting, apparently to avoid a contempt of court scenario in reference to the Sunshine Act (open meetings law) case injunction, it appears the UCR Board will not address this matter until late March, just days before enforcement begins. We believe the current delay in issuing you an account now constitutes an unreasonable, constructive denial that is actionable.
We believe there are actually two causes of action against the UCR Board and/or its new UCR vendor, one by permitting services due to "reliance," and another by your clients due to this obstruction, clients who rely on you to make timely filings annually who may soon face unfair enforcement action despite having made good faith efforts to comply with UCR.
A number of permitting services have responded to our previous emails, advising that they are interested in moving forward with a class action suit because they relied upon representations made last Summer that the UCR Board would be setting up special admin accounts for permitting services that would circumvent the new tax id requirement and the UCR Board has failed to do so.
Please be advised the
SBTC now intends to take legal action if the Board does not immediately provide relief within the next three business days by turning off the tax id requirement.
We will keep you updated.
Sincerely,
--SBTC
