The Oregonian | By Everton Bailey Jr. | October 11, 2019
AT&T said Friday it will give refunds to customers wrongly charged a fee in the name of Portland’s 1% clean energy tax on large businesses.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Friday morning that AT&T had collected the fee from its customers even though the new tax does not apply to the phone provider. Willamette Week first reported on the charges in August.
The company wouldn’t say how many people will be refunded, when it will occur or how much money has been collected. As of January, large companies have to pay a 1% surcharge on their retail sales in Portland. The tax is meant to help raise funds for clean energy projects, energy-saving retrofits for low-income homeowners and renters, green infrastructure and the creation of living-wage green energy jobs.
City officials said companies subject to the tax can raise prices or pass along surcharges to customers, but utility companies like AT&T are among a category of businesses – utilities – that are exempt from the business tax. AT&T charged its Portland customers a surcharge anyway.
“The city only recently notified us that we are exempt from the tax,” AT&T said a statement provided Friday. “We will be issuing refunds to our customers.”
The city said it told AT&T in September that the company wasn’t subject to the tax but didn’t know if the utility planned to stop collecting it from customers.
It’s not clear how much the fee was.
One Oregonian/OregonLive employee, for example, reported being charged 23 cents in April, 7 cents in May and 5 cents every month after until September. Each of those charges was listed as a Portland clean energy surcharge.
A class action lawsuit was filed Friday afternoon against AT&T in Multnomah County Circuit Court alleging unlawful trade practices and unjust enrichment due to the charges.
The suit, filed by Lewis & Clark history professor Elliott Young, said AT&T violated Oregon’s unlawful trade practices act and that wrongly charged customers are due $200 in penalties and interest as required by law.
“In an effort to profit and to obtain an unfair advantage over its competitors, AT&T misled thousands of Oregon customers into paying unlawful five cent surcharges that AT&T was not permitted to collect,” the lawsuit said. “AT&T only said it would refund the money it wrongfully collect from Oregon customers after AT&T got caught.”
Portland-based attorney Michael Fuller is representing Young in the lawsuit.
