Energy Law / Public Utilities Regulation:
Here is a recent article regarding the status of special tax incentives for the Rockport coal-gasification project.
ROCKPORT – During a brief phone conference March 14 with the Lincolnland Economic Development Corp. executive board, Indiana Gasification project manager Mark Lubbers was optimistic that the Indiana Department of Revenue would side with the company and backer Gov. Mitch Daniels to institute a 20-year, $120 million tax credit.
The agency is slated to rule on whether the tax credit applies for the $2.6 billion plant. Supporters of the project believe the credits are integral to the success of the plant and were meant to be part of the deal from its earliest stages. Last month the credits were stripped from a bill that passed a House vote.
The company also lobbied the legislature to amend a section of tax code that provides incentives for integrated power plants who sell their product directly to utility providers for consumer use. According to Lubbers, IG could have easily made that claim, but upon Indiana Finance Authority urging they wanted to clarify the statute to include language that specified companies selling energy to the IFA was also covered. He said once that provision was introduced, Vectren began to openly oppose the move.
“A smarter path would be to ask the Indiana Department of Revenue for a revenue ruling that has the same force of law,” Lubbers said. “We put our arguments before them and asked them to issue a ruling that states clearly that we are covered by the definition of integrated power plants.”
It should be noted the Indiana General Assembly recently dropped a bill to provide special tax incentives for the project legislatively, which is discussed in this article.
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