The long-standing $200 tax stamp imposed under the National Firearms Act (NFA) on suppressors, short-barreled rifles (SBRs), short-barreled shotguns (SBSs), and “any other weapons” (AOWs) has officially been reduced to zero dollars.
While the NFA itself remains intact, the federal government will no longer collect a tax for the transfer or manufacture of those specific items.
For decades, the NFA tax stamp functioned as a financial barrier layered on top of an already burdensome regulatory process. While $200 may not sound significant today, it was intentionally punitive when enacted in 1934 and has long been criticized as an unconstitutional tax on exercising a fundamental right.
Setting the tax at $0 represents a shift in federal firearms policy, even if it falls short of full NFA repeal.
What Actually Changes and What Does Not
The most immediate and tangible change is simple: there will no longer be a federal tax collected for suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, or AOWs.
That said, it is important to separate tax policy from regulation.
The underlying NFA registration framework remains in place. ATF Form 1 and Form 4 submissions are still required, along with background checks, fingerprints, photographs, and federal approval before possession. In short, the paperwork survives even though the tax does not.
This creates a legal and constitutional oddity. The NFA was upheld for decades on the premise that it was a tax statute. With the tax now set at zero, the government is left enforcing a regulatory regime that arguably no longer aligns with its original justification. The Department of Justice continues to support ongoing registration requirements, but this issue is almost certain to face renewed legal scrutiny.
The ATF Was…Not Ready
If anyone believed the transition to tax-free suppressors would be smooth, the ATF quickly dispelled that notion.
Within hours of the policy taking effect, the ATF’s eForms system buckled under demand. Login errors, timeouts, password rejections, and outright crashes were widely reported by consumers, dealers, and manufacturers alike. For many, submitting paperwork on day one—or day two—was simply impossible.
This was not a surprise surge. The law was signed months in advance. The ATF knew the effective date. It knew suppressors were already one of the fastest-growing segments of the firearms market. It even took the eForms system offline beforehand for “updates” and “upgrades” intended to prepare for increased traffic.
And yet, when the moment arrived, the system folded.
Industry contacts tell TTAG that the sheer volume of submissions overwhelmed the servers almost immediately. Translation: the federal agency responsible for regulating this process apparently did not scale infrastructure for the most predictable demand spike imaginable.
One might reasonably ask how an agency with months to prepare—and near-total control over the process—failed to anticipate that Americans would eagerly exercise a right that had just become cheaper for the first time in 91 years.
Delay by Design or Just Government as Usual?
To be fair, government IT failures are so common they barely register as news anymore. From healthcare portals to unemployment systems to tax filing platforms, federal technology has a long history of collapsing precisely when citizens need it most.
Still, the irony here is hard to miss.
For decades, critics argued that NFA delays were artificial—bureaucratic friction used as a deterrent rather than a necessity. The ATF itself inadvertently reinforced that argument in recent years, approving some suppressor transfers in days, hours, or even minutes when it chose to do so.
Those faster approvals demonstrated something important: the system was never inherently slow. It was slow because it was allowed to be.
Now, with the $200 tax removed and public demand surging, the same system suddenly can’t keep up. Whether that is institutional inertia, poor planning, or simple indifference is an open question. What is not in dispute is that law-abiding gun owners once again paid the price for federal dysfunction—this time in the form of error messages instead of a tax bill.
Progress, Even When It’s Messy
Despite the rocky rollout, approvals began trickling in within 24 hours for some applicants, demonstrating that the system still works when it stays online. Whether those turnaround times remain short or balloon again remains to be seen.
What matters most is the larger trajectory. For the first time since 1934, Americans can acquire suppressors and certain short-barreled firearms without paying a federal tax for permission. The ATF may not have been ready for that reality—but the country clearly was.
If nothing else, the crash served as an unintended confirmation of what gun owners have said for years: remove the artificial barriers, and Americans will exercise their rights in large numbers. The system’s failure to meet that demand says far more about the system than about the people using it.
Which NFA Items Are Still Taxed
Not all NFA-regulated items are affected by the change.
Machine guns and destructive devices remain subject to the $200 federal tax stamp and all existing restrictions. The elimination of the tax on suppressors and short-barreled firearms may ultimately serve as a stepping stone toward future challenges to the remaining categories, but for now, the distinction remains.
Why This Matters
Suppressors are hearing-safety tools that reduce sound and concussion for shooters and those nearby. Their widespread use in Europe and other parts of the world has long underscored how out of step U.S. policy has been on the issue.
Short-barreled rifles and shotguns similarly offer practical advantages in confined spaces, including home defense and vehicle deployment, without presenting any unique public-safety risk compared to their longer-barreled counterparts.
Removing the tax does not eliminate regulation, but it does remove an artificial cost barrier that disproportionately affects law-abiding gun owners while doing nothing to deter criminal misuse.
A Step Forward—Not the End of the Fight
The reduction of the NFA tax stamp to $0 is a significant development, but it does not end the debate over the NFA itself. Many Second Amendment advocates argue that once the tax justification disappears, continued registration and transfer controls become constitutionally suspect.
Several lawmakers, including Rep. Andrew Clyde, have already called on the Department of Justice to reevaluate the NFA in light of the tax elimination. Whether courts ultimately agree remains to be seen, but the NFA’s legal foundation is now weaker than it has been in decades.
The Bottom Line
As of January 1, 2026:
- Suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, and AOWs will carry a $0 federal tax stamp
- ATF approval and registration requirements still apply
- Machine guns and destructive devices remain taxed and restricted
This is not the repeal of the National Firearms Act. But it is a clear acknowledgment—whether intentional or not—that the federal government’s long-standing approach to taxing certain firearms accessories was increasingly indefensible.
For gun owners, it represents real progress. For policymakers and courts, it opens the door to the next chapter in the fight over the NFA’s future.
More on the ATF and NFA from thetruthaboutguns.com
- Why the $200 NFA Tax Stamp Is a Century-Old Trap That Hurts Responsible Gun Owners
- The $0 Tax Stamp Era Is Here—And It’s About to Kill the 16-Inch Rifle
- How the NFA Has Hurt American Suppressor Innovation — And What Could Fix It
- If We Win: What Gun Owners Should Expect After NFA Reform
Can’t speak too much for the feds but upgrading software for NY is a full on project management issue and often has time/cost overruns even when everything goes right so more likely inability than unwillingness to keep up though the latter is certainly possible (or a contributing factor). Will be interesting to see how long this $0 situation continues and what gets done before legal or legislative changes happen but seeing a lot more questions about SBR/SBS/AOW and why none are really legal here.
I make my living building very very large “cloud computing” systems. I have designed and built services that scale up to withstand Black Friday, and day-of-release surges for streaming media properties, then scale themselves back down to be cost-efficient when demand subsides and levels off at ordinary levels. The loads are measured in millions of transactions per minute.
These systems aren’t just a well endowed tower PC under some guy’s desk. They’re well engineered distributed deployments of mature technologies for load balancing, web service, business logic, and databases.
If the NFA form processing systems can’t handle a paltry few hundred thousand customers spread over a few days, that means they weren’t designed to do it. The decision makers either chose not to handle the load, or they hired the wrong people to do it.
Neither would be shocking.
0 tax all while still having to jump through hoops like silly circle animals amounts to squeezing the weenie out of a hotdog. Get real…you subject yourself to an anal exam for a gizmo that costs much more than it should, still makes noise and gums up the works. The question is…Was it all worth it? The honest answer is hell no.
I believe that this is just government as usual. You’d be hard pressed to find anything the federal government has it’s fingers in that isn’t inefficient or incompetent or both. The military, while very competent, is very inefficient. Healthcare? Welfare? Regulatory statutes? Taxation? All these areas are very poorly administered and all very inefficient.
So it is no surprise that the ATF was not ready. It’s not on purpose, it’s just another example of our federal government being their usual fucked selves.
Bucephalus, like all government agencies, it’s apathy with an underlying hostility for the citizens that they serve.
Those are certainly likely factors but I wouldn’t rule out cumbersome acquisition and change order processes as the primary culprit.
Tax Free Suppressors: Real Approval Times Revealed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7niohgqV1o
With e-forms even delays are something we really can’t complain about compared to the days of paper.
Until we get rid of the NFA, e-forms, combined with $0 stamp are the best we’re gonna get but no one should think that it’s not a massive step forward.
It’s not that long ago that I had a can stuck in NFA jail for nearly two full years.
What happens next?
Legal wrangling and political shenanigans, of course.
So long as it is 4 steps forward and 3 back we still get something to build on. Still need more cost effective ways of doing it of course.
We have little children around here with more patience and political savvy than most of the commentors:
There was no legal case for the elimination of SBR/AOW/Suppressors under the NFA until just five days ago when the first person applied. Now there has been an injured party, perhaps tens of thousands, who now have standing to sue. When sued, the government has the option to settle or contest. I suspect as does the Four Boxes that they will settle. So rather than whining, sue the DOJ or join some organization that will.
PS. You are already on a number of lists, no matter who you are…the US has a data center in Utah (and others) that record every call, text and e-mail on Earth every day. They can also use them forensically to run all your associates also and crack any civilian available decryption. So buy whatever you want…it just doesn’t matter.
Brother Grimm,
I despise the legal standard that we cannot sue to block a law until government has actually enforced the law upon us. What if government passes a law requiring immediate and summary execution for wearing red baseball caps? If we have to wait until government enforces that law to sue, how can the injured party (the person who wore the red baseball cap and who police summarily and immediately executed) sue?
Now, in the case at hand concerning suppressors plus rifles and shotguns with arbitrarily defined “short” barrels, it seems to me that someone could go to a local gun store and ask to purchase one of those items ala “cash and carry”, at which point of course the local gun store would deny the purchase citing the law which requires the registration process. At that point, that customer can claim that the current registration law harmed them and they should thus have standing.
At any rate, my point is that citizens should not have to endure imprisonment and/or capital punishment before they can claim standing to sue to block laws which violate our rights. Of course the way things should be and the way they will be are two different sides of two different coins. We can dream though, right?
You can sue prior to injury and if a judge agrees can grant standing. That often does not happen with anything related to the 2nd ammendment and increasingly the 4th. Sucks but they cannot realistically deny lack of standing now (saw this play out 2 dozen times in NY post Bruen with our newer laws).
My goal, as of now, is to acquire as many of my *wants* that fall under the NFA while I’m still assured that I can get a tax stamp which keeps me out of prison in my state.
You all can thank me for the elimination of the tax because I purchased three suppressors in late 2024 which entailed $600 in tax stamps. You know how these things go: had I NOT purchased three suppressors, thinking that I could wait another 15 months since I had already been waiting for 10 years, the tax would still be in place.
I am thankful to everyone able to buy any NFA that did for it’s existence. Keeping these items in production, circulation, and use is the only reason this ever had any momentum to happen. Now the hard part of keeping it going so removals/repeals become a necessity.
There are TWO tax stamps. Until 7 days ago there was a $200 manufacturing tax stamp, AND a $200 transfer stamp.
Now that both stamps are $0, people rapidly figured out that instead of buying a suppressor, they can manufacture their own. And you don’t have to be an SOT unless it’s for sale.
We are now living in a world of (legal) 3D printed 22RL cans. Fill out the forms, pay the $0 fee, 3D printer go whirrrr. And when it fails after 1000 rounds, wash rinse repeat.
Between that, certain oil filters, and the high likelihood of DIY build kits for low pressure rounds I am expecting to see an increase in production of subsonic 22lr.