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Show Mountain Fuel Taxes Postponed A decision by the Utah Public Service Commission which will in effect postpone until a future time the payment of federal taxes resulting from past tax benefits has lowered Mountain Moun-tain Fuel Supply Company's $28.6 millin general rate increase in-crease to $15.8 million. B.Z. Kastler, Mountain Fuel president, said the granting of the full amount would have resulted in lower rates in the future than will now occur. The company has asked that $8 million be collected in rates for each of the next five years. Half of that amount would have gone to pay current taxes. The rest would have been set aside to pay taxes that will come due in the future as a result of past tax benefits which benefited customers in the form of lower rates in the past. "The commission chose to wait until those taxes actually come due," Kastler said. "But this does not mean they will not have to be paid and eventually even-tually included in the rates. It just means they will be paid at a later time." Mountain Fuel had asked that the amount for the future taxes be paid now so that those paying for the taxes would be as much as possible the same customers who received the past benefits. Kastler said the company is studying the total effects of the commission's order on the company. After the close of 1977 operations and all financial finan-cial data for the year are available, the company will take another look at the effects effec-ts of the order. He said that would probably be during the spring of 1978. Because the order contains several specific rulings against Mountain Fuel, one of the factors to be considered at that time will be if the company will be required to seek additional general rate relief during 1978, Kastler added. The PSC's ruling results in a 10 percent increase in rates. To the typical Utah residential residen-tial customer it means an increase in-crease of approximately $2.13 per month on an annual basis. An individual bill may be more or less than that, depending depen-ding upon actual gas usage. The full $28.6 million increase in-crease actually went into ef fect December 1, 1977, as required by state law, when the PSC was unable to complete com-plete hearings and render a decision within 240 days of the filing of the application. Mountian Fuel has agreed to refund in the form of a credit on January bills the difference dif-ference between the amount which became effective December 1, 1977, and the amount authorized by the commission in its final order. The amount of the credit received by each individual customer will depend upon the amount of gas used and by the number of days in December actually covered by the December bill. Because the bills are mailed at different times of the month, some December bills only included one or two days of December, while others included nearly the entire month. The commission ordered, and all parties in the case agreed, that the 10 percent increase be applied in a uniform percentage percen-tage manner to all customer classifications pending a future public hearing after which the commission may or may not alter the uniform allocation of the increase. |