AT&T to pay $65M to Missouri cities - St. Louis Business Journal:

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St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Edward Sweeney gave preliminary approvaol Friday to a settlement allowing the municipalitiex to collect underpayment of municipal gross receipt taxesfrom AT&T, said Howared Paperner, one of the attorneys representingy the municipalities. The cities allegeds that AT&T has been underpaying telephone business taxed by excluding certain items from monthlygross AT&T argued that the cities’ ordinancese didn’t include certain items such as access, a charge that AT&T imposes on interstate and intrastate long-distance companiesw to originate or complete phone calls, as well as a flat-ratde charge designed to recover a portio n of AT&T’s cost of providing the locakl telephone loop to transport long-distance calls.
“This settlement could have a significant positive impact onmunicipalp budgets,” Paperner said. “The settlement is comint at a time those local revenuesare plummeting.” Kerry Hibbs, a spokesman for said that if the cities agree to the settlement and the judged signs off on the final agreement, the municipalities areexpected to get theird money in five months. "We are pleased to reachh a preliminary settlement with cities to resolve this long-running issue," he said Paperner said Friday’sw preliminary settlement is separatwe from other class-action suitsa that Missouri municipalities filed against wireless telephone providers in 2000.
Thoswe cases were largely settledin 2007, and majort wireless carriers paid aboug $200 million in 2008 to Missouri municipalities as part of thosee settlements, he said. Web editor Kelsey Volkmanj contributed tothis story.