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Show U P & L WILL HOLD LINE ON RATE INCREASE "Utah Power & Light Company Com-pany has taken an important step to avoid an impending increase in the cost of electricity elec-tricity for its customers," E. M. Naughton, president and general manager, announced Monday. "The company is making every effort to serve the public pub-lic at the lowest possible cost and to attract industry into the company's service area," Mr. Naughton said. "Strong inflationary pressures pres-sures in recent months made it imperative for the company to consider every available means to avoid increasing rates," he continued. "Almost everything we must buy has gone up in price, interest rates on money we must obtain for construction are near an all-time all-time high, and now the 10 federal surtax is an added burden. "We are pleased that we have offset these pressures for the present by taking advantage advant-age of a special provision in the federal income tax law. The law is complex, but its effect ef-fect is to permit us to depreciate depre-ciate our properties more rapidly, rap-idly, reducing the amount of tax paid, and 'flowing through' the savings." Mr. Naughton pointed out that "the Public Service Commissions Com-missions have been very helpful help-ful in working with the company com-pany to make this change promptly to avoid any rate increases." in-creases." Effective immediately, the company will make the necessary neces-sary changes in its accounting to depreciate company properties prop-erties for income tax purposes under the liberalized depreciation depreci-ation provisions of the Internal Inter-nal Revenue Code. Most other electric utilities in the West are now using the aocelerated depreciation as permitted by law. Mr. Naughton pointed out that "no other industry can match the record of the electric elec-tric utility industry in resisting resist-ing higher prices and our company's record stands as one of the best in the industry. With new and ibetter electric servants coming out every year, our customers are doubling doubl-ing their use of electricity, on the average, about every ten years. We consider it our duty to have available all the electricity our customers will need at a price as low as we can keep it." |