A letter from the ATF regarding the processing of NFA items shows that the Feds can take something we do normally in seconds and multiply it by several factors of inefficiency.
For example, in fiscal year 2005, while ATF processed nearly 41,600 NFA applications, by 2013 that number had skyrocketed by more than 380 percent to more than 199,900 applications….When ATF implemented the eForms
system, paper NFA Tax-Paid applications took 9 months to process, while eForms reduced processing
time to within 100 days.
For the same time period, Florida Concealed Weapon permit applications reached the largest number in history with 204,288 and they were being issued well within the legal 90 days as per Florida law with many cases applicants getting their cards in the mail within 4 to 5 weeks if they used the regional offices.
Both NFA and the way it is processed are obsolete practices that need to be revamped or better yet, eliminated altogether.
Hat Tip to Alan B.
Don’t forget that this same type of government efficiency is now in charge of your health care.
My thoughts exactly! Maybe they hired the same company that built the healthcare.gov website.
Assuming that all of those 199,900 applications were for tax stamp items (and I realize that’s almost certainly a faulty assumption), what do you suppose they’re doing with that $39,980,000?
Actually, It’s unclear how many of those are actual tax-paid transfers; the implication is that the number is inclusive of all NFA transfer applications, not just form 1/4.
Forms 1/4 are really the only ones for which taxes are paid: Form 1 is always $200, and form 4 is $5 for AOW, $200 for everything else.
Form 2 (notification of manufacture by SOT), form 3 (transfer between between SOT), and form 5 (transfer to/from government agencies, and to heirs from a deceased individual owner) are all tax-free.
If I had to guess, I’d say that at least half of all NFA applications processed by the BATFE are tax-free.
Also, the money doesn’t go to the BATFE: It goes to the treasury and is put right into the general fund — NONE of it goes the the BATFE by default.
One thing I neglected to mention the other comment thread is that long transfer times (6+ months) are really only a recent development.
Furthermore, NFA tracker’s graph seems to suggest that NFA branch is actually making significant strides to reduce their backlog:
http://www.nfatracker.com/TrendGraphAll.aspx
Minor spike in mid-2011 and major spike in early 2013.
Yeah, the backlog is due to a sudden surge in firearm purchases. Interestingly, it seems the wait time was effectively random before 2010.
I think that’s due to both the ATF’s process being different (the way they assigned work to examiners), and the sample size being relatively small.
If you take the actual data from before wait times standardized, and separate it by state, you’ll probably see a lot more consistency.
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