A tangled thicket of Oregon tax rules might snare Google Fiber, and could have a big impact on whether that company opts to bring its hyperfast Internet service to the Portland area.
State lawmakers say they’re planning to address the tax issue during the legislative session that begins next month. It’s unclear if that would be soon enough for Google, which has said it could make a decision on serving Portland and its suburbs by the end of the year.
The issue dates to 2009, when Oregon moved from local assessment of cable companies’ networks to “central assessment,” which triggered a new tax formula that values companies’ property based on the value of their brand and other “intangible” assets.
Comcast went to court to fight that ruling and, in 2009, the Oregon Tax Court concluded that the state had incorrectly applied its tax formula. That could have required 10 Oregon counties to refund nearly $17 million in property taxes they’d already collected from customers.
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About Mark Milliman
Mark Milliman is a Principal Consultant at Inphotonics Research driving the adoption and assisting local governments to plan, build, operate, and lease access open-access municipal broadband networks. Additionally, he works with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to increase the value of their intellectual capital through the creation of strategic product plans and execution of innovative marketing strategies. With more than 22 years of experience in the telecommunications industry that began at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Mark has built fiber, cable, and wireless networks around the world to deliver voice, video, and data services. His thorough knowledge of all aspects of service delivery from content creation to the design, operation, and management of the network is utilized by carriers and equipment manufacturers. Mark conceived and developed one of the industry's first multi-service provisioning platform and is multiple patent holder. He is active in the IEEE as a senior member. Mark received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
