FPL to keep $772M annual tax cut
Florida Power
Co. gets to keep refund.
The Florida Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to accept voluntary dismissal of a consumer advocate’s challenge to Florida Power & Light’s use of a $772 million tax cut for hurricane recovery costs.
Instead of refunding taxes to customers, FPL indirectly used the tax savings & Light your tax to recover from Hurricane Irma.
FPL customers pay taxes on their electric bills. Florida’s other utilities either passed the tax savings onto customers voluntarily or were forced to do so by the Florida Public Service Commission, which regulates the electric utilities. FPL and other corporations received tax windfalls from the tax reform law of 2017, which lowered the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 2017’s percent.
The tax cut is annual so FPL will be benefiting from billions of dollars in savings from the federal tax cut every year, as long as the 21 percent corporate tax level remains.
The Office of Public Counsel, which represents consumers, appealed the issue to the Supreme Court. But it has dropped the appeal following a June settlement with FPL over what the Juno Beachbased utility said was $1.3 billion in hurricane costs.
At the time, Public Counsel J.R. Kelly said his office’s priority in the settlement with FPL was to secure new tracking procedures by FPL of its expenses for recovery from future storms. He also said they got some “concessions,” including the reclassification of about $50 million in Irma recovery costs.
The Public Service Commission approved the settlement in July.