AG wants utilities' tax cuts passed on to customers
The sweeping GOP corporate tax cut will shave millions off Eversource Energy’s latest rate hike after Attorney General Maura Healey pushed regulators to pass the tax windfall on to customers.
Healey’s office filed a motion in December asking regulators to recalculate rates for 10 power, gas and water companies based on the lower 21 percent corporate tax rate.
Most utilities are allowed to recover what they pay in income taxes from customers. The GOP tax cut passed last month, which lowers the corporate rate from 35 percent, will reap public utilities millions in savings.
“This tax bill is being paid for by the people of Massachusetts, so the money should go back in their pockets,” Healey said in a statement. “Our office filed this action to ensure that these savings go to customers.”
Eversource has proposed lowering its rates for eastern Massachusetts customers by $35 million and rates for customers in Western Mass by $16 million, Healey’s office said.
One of the other companies Healey called to give back its tax savings, Berkshire Gas — which distributes natural gas to thousands of customers in 20 western Massachusetts communities — isn’t on board.
The company responded to Healey’s petition for a broad rate review by telling regulators her “selective, proposed adjustment to rates is not needed, could, in fact, be confiscatory and will only be inefficient and costly to administer.”
Instead, Berkshire said regulators should allow gas companies and other utilities to simply operate as usual and take account of the lower corporate tax rate when they next adjust their rates.