AT&T to pay $65M to Missouri cities
St. Louis Business Journal - by Rick Desloge
AT&T has agreed to pay $65 million to 271 Missouri municipalities, including University City, Wellston and Winchester, to settle a 2004 class-action lawsuit over taxes on landlines.
St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Edward Sweeney gave preliminary approval Friday to a settlement allowing the municipalities to collect underpayment of municipal gross receipt taxes from AT&T, said Howard Paperner, one of the attorneys representing the municipalities.
The cities alleged that AT&T has been underpaying telephone business taxes by excluding certain items from monthly gross receipts.
AT&T argued that the cities’ ordinances didn’t include certain items such as access, a charge that AT&T imposes on interstate and intrastate long-distance companies to originate or complete phone calls, as well as a flat-rate charge designed to recover a portion of AT&T’s cost of providing the local telephone loop to transport customers’ long-distance calls.
“This settlement could have a significant positive impact on municipal budgets,” Paperner said. “The settlement is coming at a time those local revenues are plummeting.”
Kerry Hibbs, a spokesman for AT&T, said that if the cities agree to the settlement and the judge signs off on the final agreement, the municipalities areexpected to get their money in five months.
"We are pleased to reach a preliminary settlement with cities to resolve this long-running issue," he said.
Paperner said Friday’s preliminary settlement is separate from other class-action suits that Missouri municipalities filed against wireless telephone providers in 2000.
Those cases were largely settled in 2007, and major wireless carriers paid about $200 million in 2008 to Missouri municipalities as part of those settlements, he said.
Web editor Kelsey Volkmann contributed to this story.
rdesloge@bizjournals.com
Most Read Stories |
Most Emailed Stories |
