Happy New Year! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones and this new week in a new year has been good to you all. Luckily the first week of the year brings little in breaking official news, but we do have a few updates to bring you on the Litter Control Fee mentioned before the holidays. We also need to make sure you are all aware of some of the intricacies of the new conceal-carry law Governor Murphy signed before the end of the year.
New Firearm Law
On December 22nd Governor Murphy signed into law A-4769, which enacts a variety of restrictions and regulations regarding concealed carry gun permits. As you may be aware, the US Supreme Court ruled in June that some restrictions on firearm carry permits were unconstitutional, including the types of regulations which New Jersey has had in place for decades. This ruling makes it likely that more NJ residents will apply for and make use of concealed carry permits. In terms of the effect on your business, this new law has one provision which applies to all private property, including commercial property—it bans permit holders from carrying their concealed weapon into any business unless “the owner has provided express consent or has posted a sign indicating that it is permissibleto carry on the premises a concealed handgun with a valid and lawfully issued permit under N.J.S.2C:58-4.”
There is no compliance burden for business owners. If someone carries into a business that doesn't have a posted sign, they are the ones who have violated the law. If you want to allow someone (including an employee) to legally carry onto your business property you need to have some kind of sign posted granting permission. If you do nothing, then legally they are not allowed to carry. You can read the entire law here. The state has already been sued over the constitutionality of this law, and it’s possible that the entire law may be suspended while the court case drags on, but for right now this specific requirement is in effect.
Litter Control Fee
Since we reported on the Litter Control fee a few weeks ago we have received some calls from members that they had gotten a letter from the Division of Taxation saying they are subject to the Litter Control Fee, and they owed money and potentially needed to pay seven years of back fees. As a reminder, this fee was created back in 2002 and applies to retailers who sell certain products (mainly cigarettes and food). However, it only applies if the retailer sells more than $500,000 in gross sales of these products each year. Some members were told they should have been paying this fee that they didn’t even know existed, but it looks like the reason they didn’t know it existed is because they never actually hit that $500K level. But that didn’t stop the State from sending them a warning letter anyway, perhaps hoping they would quickly pay and the Treasury could pick up a few hundred dollars a year more.
We are currently working with members who received this letter as well as their accountants and the State to allow our members more time to pay taxes back, if they are even owed. In some cases, the members may have gotten the letter but may not be subject to the tax as they never met the $500,000 threshold. This can be determined by looking at your old sales records.
If you got a letter and have not done so yet, reach out to nick@njgca.org and your accountant. If you do hit this monetary level of sales of the products listed in the link above but you have not received a letter, be advised that you should pay the tax for the calendar year 2022 before it’s due on March 15th. If you have a convenience store, it might be worth checking with your accountant to make sure that you have been paying this fee because it seems they are stepping up their enforcement and most of products sold in convenience stores are subject to this fee.
All classes held at NJGCA HQ -- 615 Hope Road, Building 2, 1st Floor, Eatontown, NJ 07724
ASE Training Course - Reach Out Today!
Are you (or an employee) getting ready to take your A6, A8, or L1 in preparation to recertifying your Emission Repair Technician (ERT) credentials through the State's Emission Technician Education Program (ETEP)?
We can help --- but we need to hear from you, first! NJGCA wants to hear from students interested in our ASE-prep training program, so we can gauge demand and schedule our next session series.
As you know, the NJ Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) has always maintained a "dual-track" system to allow technicians to earn their Emission Repair Technician (ERT) credentials through New Jersey's Emission Technician Education Program (ETEP). In doing so, technicians were allowed to certify as ERTs through either an ASE-test track or an ETEP-educational class track. Starting on January 1, 2020, NJDEP amended the ETEP criteria, and the ETEP-educational class track was abolished.
Today, only the ASE-test track remains, and all ERTs must certify or re-certify their credentials though ASE to remain in the Program.
NJGCA has recently offered an ASE-prep class to help you get ready for the A6, A8, and L1. In doing so, students were welcome to participate in a ten-session preparatory class that covered material for all three ASE exams. We also had a handful of students who joined us only for the A8 or L1 sections.
Once completed, students took their ASE exams with a local ASE-approved test proctor (NJGCA can train you to prepare for the ASE exams, but are not permitted to offer the actual exam - students must make these arrangements individually themselves).
Building on that success, we are now seeking student participation in our next training series session. To make arrangements and organize a session, we need to hear from you!
By now, it’s a fairly well-known fact that electric vehicles lose range at lower temperatures. What’s not often discussed, though, is how much that deficit exactly is, and a new study aims to quantify it to provide the general public with more knowledge. The study, conducted by electric vehicle sales website Recurrent, compared the cold-weather range of 13 electric vehicles to their range at normal temperatures. More specifically, it compared the vehicles’ operation in 20°F to 30°F (-7°C to -1°C) weather against that of 70°F (21°C) weather. The cars they included in the study were the Audi e-tron, BMW i3, Chevrolet Bolt, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Kona, Jaguar I-Pace, Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S, 3, X, and Y, Volkswagen e-Golf, and Volkswagen ID.4. Of the bunch, the Bolt fared the worst, its range dropping a massive 32 percent in cold weather conditions. Close behind it were the Mustang Mach-E and ID.4, whose ranges both dropped a significant 30 percent when operating at lower temperatures.
The pledges are part of an enormous ramp-up in U.S. chip-making plans over the past 18 months, the scale of which has been likened to Cold War-era investments in the space race. The boom has implications for global technological leadership and geopolitics, with the United States aiming to prevent China from becoming an advanced power in chips, the slices of silicon that have driven the creation of innovative computing devices like smartphones and virtual-reality goggles.
A driver in Germany had his license taken away after he appeared to have fallen asleep behind the wheel of his Tesla which was on autopilot and lead police on a chase. . . Further investigation revealed that the driver had placed a "so-called steering wheel weight in the footwell" of the car’s driver’s side. "This device is attached to the steering wheel to trick the vehicle's safety system by pretending that your hand is on the wheel," the news release said.
In an effort to get control of the historic number of auto thefts throughout the state, lawmakers have approved a spate of bills that would bring stricter punishment to those caught with stolen cars. The measures have gotten bipartisan support in Trenton, but some advocacy groups say they discriminate against communities of color and actually wouldn't address the core cause of the problem. Lawmakers expect to revise the bills to try addressing those concerns while also deterring auto thefts. “We don’t want to kill a mosquito with a bazooka, so we’re trying to be cognizant that we’re not being too harsh," said Sen. Joseph Lagana, a Democrat from Paramus who sponsors six of the bills. "But at the same time, we have to remember that in all of these instances there are victims,” he said.
The new year in New Jersey will see a swath of new laws — including higher auto insurance, more gun restrictions, longer work hours for teens, and an overhaul of unemployment claims. Gov. Phil Murphy signed them all over the past year, but his signature doesn’t mean all of them take effect immediately. Here are a few of them that take effect in the next 12 months.
Tesla is hinting at making electric motors for airplanes, boats, and more in a new trademark filing that went unnoticed. The automaker filed for a new trademark last week, but it went unnoticed until now. Electrek spotted it today, and while it is for the name “Tesla” again, it still caught our interest because of the category it was filed in. Tesla is extending its trademark to a new category to market electric motors “not for land vehicles.” The definition of the category in the filing is a bit confusing, but it extends Tesla’s trademark on electric motors to “motors for airplanes,” “boat motors,” and “electric motors for toys.”
Each week, the Energy Information Administration publishes a list of average gasoline prices for the previous three weeks. NJGCA will begin including this list with the Weekly Road Warrior. Remember, these prices are reflective of self-serve everywhere except NJ.
