Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. Public Utility Commission

I respectfully dissent.

THE STATUTE

Public utility companies pay franchise taxes. One may say that a utility’s ratepayers pay such taxes, in a sense, because they supply through payment of their utility bills the revenue from which their utility company pays its tax liabilities. Along with other taxes, franchise-tax payments enter into the calculation of a utility’s “net income” and, ultimately, the official rates by which a utility computes its customer billings. See generally, Public Utility Regulatory Act (PURA), Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. art. 1446c, § 41(c) (West Supp.1993); Ron Moss,…