If suppressors are soon to be untaxed, why is ATF still requiring licensees transferring suppressors amongst themselves to pay the SOT tax?

I could see it if you wanted to deal in machine guns, but an otherwise untaxed item still being taxed at the wholesale level makes no sense whatsoever.

this question makes no sense to me. The '0' tax doesn't make the suppressor a non NFA item. It still is. And to deal in NFA items you need to be a SOT.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
this question makes no sense to me. The '0' tax doesn't make the suppressor a non NFA item. It still is. And to deal in NFA items you need to be a SOT.

Actually, you don't need an SOT. You do need a federal firearms license.

Absent one, you can pay the full transfer tax on each transfer and wait however long it takes for BATFE to act on the paperwork for even a licensee-to-licensee transfer.

The SOT was established to prevent licensees from having to do this, replacing it with the ability to have licensee-to-licensee NFA transfers happen faster (when I got in the gun business in the pre-digital age, that could take months) and to reduce the tax burden to essentially an revenue-based tax that allowed unlimited NFA taxed licensee-to-licensee transfers.

The SOT is a one time annual tax, not per item, for whatever that's worth. Unless they make an "except for machine guns" version, which does not currently exist, I don't see any reason that it would change.

But wouldn't it be true (a bit like a used suppressor market might now be possible) that since form 4 transfers are no cost that one could just do all the transfers as F4's and the SOT and the tax free F3 transfers wouldn't be needed. Or is there some aspect of this that I don't understand?

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
But wouldn't it be true (a bit like a used suppressor market might now be possible) that since form 4 transfers are no cost that one could just do all the transfers as F4's and the SOT and the tax free F3 transfers wouldn't be needed. Or is there some aspect of this that I don't understand?

But isn’t the big difference that Form 3 transfers are much simpler because pictures, fingerprints, CLEO notifications, etc. are not required, since they are between licensees. Just a quick check that the license is still valid?

What can and can’t be done is probably based on exactly what’s in the BBB that passed. Bills are usually specific in saying change this specific section of the USC by adding this, deleting that, etc.

I spent a whole bunch of time reading the bill itself and I couldn't find an answer. It just changes the tax amount. Most of this is in regulation not law which I think is why for example ClEO is going away without any change in the law. But your comment is certainly a reasonable reason for a SOT to continue doing it.

quote:

Originally posted by hrcjon:
But wouldn't it be true (a bit like a used suppressor market might now be possible) that since form 4 transfers are no cost that one could just do all the transfers as F4's and the SOT and the tax free F3 transfers wouldn't be needed. Or is there some aspect of this that I don't understand?

My assumption is that the transfer theoretically could be done dealer to dealer by Form 4, but I'm not sure why it would. The workflow on eforms is pretty streamlined on a Form 3. Hell, maybe normal transfers will end up on the Form 3.