Pennsylvania PUC approves PPL plan to return tax savings to customers

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC) approved a plan by PPL Electric Utilities Corp. to distribute $44 million in federal tax reform savings to customers in 2020.

The tax savings accumulated between Jan. 1, 2018 and June 30, 2018. PPL proposed returning tax reform savings to consumers in the form of a credit on their monthly utility bills during 2020. The total value of money returned is $39 million plus accrued interest. Those funds are in addition to the annual savings from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 that PPL is already returning to consumers via a credit currently set at -7.81 percent.

PPL will file documents on Dec. 1 establishing a revised TCJA surcharge rate for 2020, under the plan approved by the commission.

PPL proposed returning the tax savings for the first six months of 2018 during the 2020 calendar year – rather than waiting until May 2021 – to address the Commission’s stated intent to “avoid unreasonable delays in dealing with such funds.”

The PUC’s TCJA tax reform plan required 17 major electric, natural gas and water/wastewater utilities to return more than $400 million per year in tax reform savings to consumers.

Through orders approved by the PUC last year, the commission established a process for utilities to return tax savings that accumulated during the first six months of 2018 to consumers as part of each utility’s next base rate case, if a rate case was filed within three years. Otherwise, if no rate case is filed, the utilities are required to return the stub period savings by May of 2021, the PUC said.