Another state has withdrawn from a compact designed to share surplus lines taxes among states where the insurance was in effect. But the Nonadmitted Insurance Multi-State Agreement has gone into effect with the remaining six states.

Meanwhile, a competing arrangement, the Surplus Lines Insurance Multi-State Compliance Compact, has more members than NIMA but remains one short of meeting its self-imposed requirement that 10 states sign on before the tax-sharing operation goes into effect.

The rival clearinghouse plans have been developed in response to the Nonadmitted and Reinsurance Reform Act, which is part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The law, which took effect one year ago, stipulates that only the home state of a policyholder can collect premium taxes and requires state legislatures to approve a way to allocate the taxes among all states where the surplus lines coverage was in effect.

But in late June, Nevada became the sixth state to withdraw from NIMA, which is backed by the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners. NIMA still launched July 1 with only six of the original 12 states participating.

“We just took a look at the financial impact to the state and, based on that, made our decision to withdraw from NIMA,” said Scott J. Kipper, commissioner of the Nevada division of insurance in Carson City, Nev.

Nevada collects more than $7 million in surplus lines premium taxes a year, a spokesman said.

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“The premium tax differentiation between if we participated or not was going to be pretty close to the same,” Mr. Kipper said. “At this point, we're pretty comfortable with the 100% home state setup. If the situation changes, we would reconsider participation in a compact.”

Nevada's withdrawal, as well as the earlier withdrawal of Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Nebraska, from NIMA have raised the question of whether there will be a clearinghouse arrangement to collect and distribute surplus lines premium taxes, industry experts say.

But the state of Utah, which joined NIMA last year, has remained a member of the clearinghouse. At first, the state wanted to make sure that its premium revenue would not decrease as a result of the federal law, said Utah Insurance Commissioner Neal Gooch.

Utah collects $6 million to $7 million in surplus lines premium taxes annually, said Mr. Gooch, who is based in Salt Lake City.

Since NIMA's approach closely matched the international fuel tax clearinghouse the state was involved with, it was easier to adopt, he said.

“That appears to be the only working model out there right now,” Mr. Gooch said of NIMA. “It appears to be doing what it was supposed to do, and I would hope that as other states see what happens, that we may recoup some of those states that have opted out or we may get other states that might want to opt in.”

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A spokeswoman for the Florida Surplus Lines Service Office, which is the clearinghouse for NIMA, said the system is operating smoothly and without incident. The office filed the first policy covered by the compact early this month and continues to receive multistate policy filings daily, the spokeswoman said.

Tom Travis, a specialist with the Louisiana Property and Casualty Insurance Commission and an assistant to the commissioner on NIMA-related issues, said Louisiana may fare better as a participant in a tax-sharing arrangement than on its own.

“That's because, just looking at the surplus lines industry, a lot of the big premium policyholders are out of state-based oil and gas companies, for example,” he said. “We think we would be missing out on a pretty substantial amount of premium if we just went it alone. So that's one of the reasons we wanted to be in a tax-sharing arrangement.”

Louisiana, which also joined a year ago, collects about $60 million in surplus lines premium taxes annually, Mr. Travis said.

While some states are taking a wait-and-see approach to the compacts, “it seems like there's a lot of feeling our way around and trying to a get grip on how these clearinghouses are going to work,” Mr. Travis said.

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“When you look at the range of multistate premiums nationwide, once you start to apply tax rates to that, you see that the ultimate financial results of those tax calculations tend to be pretty insignificant in relation to total surplus lines tax in each state,” said Brady Kelley, executive director of the Kansas City, Mo.-based National Assn. of Professional Surplus Lines Offices Ltd., which supports SLIMPACT.

But SLIMPACT has yet to be implemented. While it has nine members states—Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Vermont—it still needs one more to become operational.

“Right now, we're not aware of any other state that is considering SLIMPACT legislation,” Mr. Kelley said.

Hawaii also withdrew from NIMA in June because the collection period for NIMA did not match up with Hawaii law, said Gordon Ito, the state's Honolulu-based insurance commissioner.

“For Hawaii, unfortunately, it didn't meet our tax provisions, and so that really was the reason why we thought at this time we should withdraw,” Mr. Ito said. “We're taking a wait-and-see approach to see what happens with SLIMPACT and what happens with NIMA. We hope that either compact gets moving forward and ultimately a uniform system is created,” he said.