On Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:46:30 -0500, ran...@farmtel.net said: > Maybe this is not new in other states but it appears to be gaining > momentum here in Iowa. > > The county real estate assessors are charging taxes on all cables and > antennas on commercial towers. This is whether there is any radio > equipment connected or not.
Haven't seen that one out here in Colorado yet. Don't give our newly-leftist State legislature any ideas. They want to buy lots of things without a budget to do so. What I *have* seen, is taxes for "land use" for Forest Service sites, passed along through the lessee of the site operating it for the USFS. There *is* a tax "code" for the USFS computers that indicates that a particular installation is Amateur Radio and thus not to be taxed, but we got a bill once when the site operator/lessee screwed up and entered our Amateur systems as "Commercial" into the Federal system and then wanted to "pass-through" (allowed on our contract) those USFS taxes/fees. I never saw the computer systems or the codes, but a nice stern letter to the commercial operator stating that we were both Amateur Radio and a State non-profit that the sales rep passed to the commercial operator's tax lawyers, got it all straightened out, and we were credited many months later. (Having to wait three months to see if the bill got credited properly, meanwhile the bill said we were "overdue"... says a lot about the organizational skills of this particular commercial operator -- but hey, it worked out all right in the end, and I sure wasn't going to send them the money... if I'd have done that, it would have taken six months to a year to get the refund, because I'm SURE they had no proper way to apply it to future bills!) The "fun" of commercial sites, eh? Love the coverage, hate the paperwork, process, procedures, and general Dilbert-style silliness... Nate WY0X -- Nate Duehr n...@natetech.com
