Regulators demand Louisiana utility customers get back improperly collected taxes

BATON ROUGE -- Federal taxes for utilities dropped by 14 percent Jan. 1, but the privately owned companies continue to collect at the old 35 percent rate from more than 2 million Louisiana customers.

All five elected regulators on the sharply partisan Public Service Commission reacted Wednesday with rare unanimity in demanding that the utilities to return the tax over-collections post-haste.

“Right now they are charging people for taxes they know they’re not going to have to pay and their ratepayers, right now, are paying bills that are very high because of the weather,” Commissioner Lambert Boissiere III, D-New Orleans, said after the panel’s monthly meeting. “Those benefits should go to the public immediately.”

Republican Commissioner Mike Francis, of Crowley, agreed: “We need the money in the pockets of the people.”

Read more: http://www.houmatoday.com/news/20180222/regulators-demand-la-utility-customers-get-back-improperly-collected-taxes