(Source: Wallethub)

When Charter Communications CEO Thomas Rutledge met with President Donald Trump in early 2017, he probably did not realize just how much the Trump Administration was prepared to reward America’s second largest cable company.

After collecting a $98 million dollar compensation package for himself by successfully pulling off acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, Rutledge today presides over America’s least taxed corporation. In fact, the American people owe Charter a significant ‘refund’ after the company achieved a negative overall U.S. tax rate of -883.95%.

WalletHub analyzed annual reports for the S&P 100 — the largest and most established companies on the stock market — in order to determine the federal, state and international tax rates they paid in 2017.

Charter’s tax accountants took full advantage of the Trump Administration’s permanent corporate tax cuts, which lowered corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%. But Republicans who supported the corporate tax cuts left intact most of the generous corporate deductions, offsets, and other credits that ensured few of America’s top corporations ever paid anything close to 35%. As a result, the lowered tax rate combined with what critics call “corporate welfare and giveaways” allow a growing number of companies to not pay a penny in taxes. In fact, many will be in the enviable position of avoiding taxes and still getting an effective ‘refund’ worth billions.

Companies that are required to regularly invest in their businesses and buy equipment, hardware, and other tangibles as part of the cost of doing business are often the most generously rewarded. Tax deductions originally intended to inspire corporate spending during tougher economic times are great news for companies that have significant capital investments. Most of these companies planned on making those investments with or without a tax break, but all are welcome to the idea of using those investments to reduce their effective tax rate to zero. Charter’s acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and Bright House came with the understanding both systems needed substantial upgrades — spending Charter is using to offset taxes not just this year, but several years in the future.

The next least-taxed company was Kraft Heinz, which was taxed at -98.7%. Other big winners are AT&T (-98.36%), Comcast (-55.59%), and Verizon (-51.36%). AT&T and Verizon are frequent winners of an effective tax rate of 0.00% because of the substantial deductions available to both as a result of continually upgrading their highly profitable cellular networks.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused a request by the Trump administration and the telecommunications industry to wipe away a lower court decision that had upheld Obama-era net neutrality rules aimed at ensuring a free and open internet, though the justices’ action does not undo the 2017 repeal of the policy.

The high court decision not to throw out the 2016 U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling leaves a legal precedent in place that could help net neutrality supporters in any future legal battle if that policy is ever re-introduced.

The rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama, intended to safeguard equal access to content on the internet, were opposed by President Donald Trump, a Republican.

The Trump administration and the telecom industry had wanted to erase the 2016 ruling even though the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission in December voted to repeal the net neutrality rules. The policy reversal went into effect in June.

The Supreme Court’s brief order noted that three of the court’s conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch – would have thrown out the appeals court decision. Neither Chief Justice John Roberts nor new Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh participated in the decision.

Industry trade group USTelecom, one of the groups that challenged the 2015 net neutrality rules, said the high court’s action was “not surprising.” USTelecom said it would “continue to support” the repeal “from challenges in Washington, D.C. and state capitals.”

Rosenworcel

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who backed the net neutrality order in 2015, said on Twitter that the commission had “actually petitioned the Supreme Court to erase history and wipe out an earlier court decision upholding open internet policies. But today the Supreme Court refused to do so.”

The Justice Department also has filed suit to block California’s state net neutrality law from taking effect in January. The state agreed in October to delay enforcement of the law pending appeals of the net neutrality reversal.

The FCC voted 3-2 in December along party lines to reverse the rules adopted under Obama that had barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization.

The new rules, which gave internet service providers greater power to regulate the content that customers access, are now the subject of a separate legal fight after being challenged by many of the groups that backed net neutrality.

The net neutrality repeal was a win for providers like Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc. It was opposed by internet companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc, which have said the repeal could lead to higher costs.

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Will Dunham

A group largely funded by the telecommunications industry is among the latest to call on Congress to pass net neutrality legislation, just as long as the cable and phone companies that have fiercely opposed net neutrality as we know it get the chance to effectively write the law defining their vision of a free and open internet.

Broadband for America (BfA) has long pretended to represent the interests of consumers. It has tried to steer clear of partisan politics by representing itself as a bipartisan organization, claiming that since its formation in 2009, the Broadband for America coalition “has included members ranging from consumer groups, to content and application providers, to the companies that build and maintain the internet. Together these organizations represent the hundreds of millions of Americans who are literally connected through broadband.”

In this spirit, BfA has given top priority to adopting a new, bipartisan, federal net neutrality law that would eliminate the regulatory uncertainty changing administrations have introduced through agencies like the FCC.

The telecom industry shuddered under the Obama Administration’s FCC with Thomas Wheeler as chairman. Wheeler pushed for bright line net neutrality rules that cut off the industry’s ability to toy with paid fast lanes on the internet, potentially costing telecom companies billions in future revenue opportunities. Wheeler backed his regulatory authority by using Title II regulations that have withstood corporate court challenges since the 1930s, and made clear that authority also extended to blocking or banning future creative monetization schemes that unfairly favored some internet traffic at the expense of other traffic.

The incoming Trump Administration discarded almost every regulatory policy introduced by Wheeler through its appointed FCC chairman, Ajit Pai. With Republicans in firm control at the FCC, in the White House, and in Congress, the broadband industry and its political allies feel safe to draft and pass a new federal law that will give companies regulatory certainty. One proposal could potentially permanently remove the FCC’s future ability to flexibly manage changing broadband industry practices.

BfA’s “pro net neutrality” campaign directly targets consumers through its website while also pretending to represent their interests. It is a classic D.C. astroturfing operation — fooling unwitting consumers into pushing for policies against their best interests. BfA claims it supports “policies that align with the core principles of an open internet: no blocking, no throttling, no discrimination and most importantly, ensuring all consumers have access to internet. Further, despite state efforts, only Congress maintains the power to regulate the internet.”

Broadband for America’s campaign to block this legislative maneuver actually helps net neutrality opponents.

Since no phone or cable company in the country is seeking to block, throttle, or discriminate against certain websites, passing a law that prohibits this is not controversial. But BfA does not mention other, more threatening practices ISPs have toyed with in recent years that would be banned by robust net neutrality rules. At the top of the list is “paid fast lanes,” allowing preferred content partners to get preferential treatment on sometimes clogged internet pipes. As past controversies between Netflix and Google over interconnection agreements illustrate, if an internet provider refuses to continually upgrade traffic pipelines, all traffic can suffer. With paid prioritization, some traffic will suffer even more because of preferential treatment given to sponsored traffic. The industry does not call this throttling, and some ISPs have blamed content providers for the problem, suggesting Netflix and YouTube traffic unfairly takes a toll on their networks.

BfA also objects to state efforts to bring back net neutrality, claiming such regulatory powers only belong in the hands of the federal government (especially the current one). It is no coincidence BfA’s beliefs and policies mirror their benefactors. While claiming to represent the interests of consumers, BfA is almost entirely funded by: AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, CTIA – The Wireless Association, Comcast, Cox, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), and USTelecom-The Broadband Association. The only major American telecom company not on this list is Verizon, but their interests are represented by USTelecom, an industry-funded lobbying group that backs America’s top telephone companies.

Broadband for America shares a list of some of its members — all a part of the cable, wireless, and telephone industry.

Under the guise of the midterm elections, BfA issued a new call for federal legislation enforcing the telecom industry’s definition of net neutrality, and not just on telecom companies. BfA also wants regulation of “edge providers,” a wonky term that means any website, web service, web application, online content hosting or online content delivery service that customers access over the internet. In reality, the only edge providers the industry is concerned with are Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook — companies that often directly compete against telecom company-backed content ventures and lucrative online advertising. Ironically, many Republicans that have strongly argued for deregulation have supported imposing new laws and regulatory oversight on some of these companies — notably Google and Facebook. Amazon joined the list as a result of President Trump’s ongoing feud with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO and owner of the Washington Post.

Backing the BfA’s lobbying push for a new net neutrality law are results from a suspect BfA-commissioned (and paid for) study by a polling firm that claims “87 percent of voters ‘react positively to arguments for a new legislative approach that sets one clear set of rules to protect consumer privacy that applies to all internet companies, websites, devices and applications.’” A full copy of the study, the exact questions asked during polling, and more information about the sampling process was not available to review. Instead, the conclusions were posted as an opinion piece by Inside Sources, a website that provides D.C. strategy, public relations, and lobbying firms with a free home to publish OpEds on behalf of their clients. Newspapers are allowed to reprint Inside Sources wire service content for free, sometimes without full disclosure of the financial arrangements behind the studies or author(s) involved.

The BfA campaign for a federal net neutrality law is not in isolation. The telecom industry has been on an all-out push for a new net neutrality law since Ajit Pai led the campaign to repeal the FCC rules. The industry’s campaign for pseudo-net neutrality has even won over some in the media like the editorial board of the Washington Post, that published its own OpEd in early October calling Wheeler’s use of Title II authority a regulatory overreach. The Post also has no patience for lawsuits being filed by telecom companies and the Justice Department against the state of California after passing its own statewide net neutrality law. The industry pushback in court is part of the Post’s argument for a new national law to ‘end confusion’:

The fight over net neutrality today can be reduced to a single sentence: Everyone is suing everyone else. Congress should step in.

The Justice Department said Sunday it will take California to court over its law requiring Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally. Those ISPs were already primed to sue states on their own. And California is one of more than 20 states suing the Federal Communications Commission over its repeal of the Obama administration’s rules. “We’re not out to protect the robber barons. We want to protect the people,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) told us.

The FCC abdicated its responsibility on net neutrality when it repealed the old rules with no adequate replacement. Now, without setting forth its own rules, the federal government is seeking to block states from creating their own. That may be frustrating to Americans who want an Internet where providers do not dictate what information reaches them and how fast. But a nationwide framework governing net neutrality would be preferable to a patchwork of state regulations establishing local regimes for systems that transcend borders. And creating that framework is up to Congress.

But not all are confused. California resident Bob Jacobson defended his state’s interests in a rebuttal to the Post’s editorial:

Absurd reasoning emanating from the nation’s capital of corruption, Washington, DC. California has always led the nation — including the Federal government — in the sensible, productive regulation and consequent growth of its telecom and information economy, now the world’s largest. The Moore Universal Telecom Services Act, passed in reaction to the breakup of the old AT&T, is still the nation’s only comprehensive, progressive telecom policy, its success reflected in California’s robust technological and social infrastructure. Rather than supersede California’s policies, our national and other state legislature’s and regulatory agencies should learn from and adapt them to better serve equally all the American people. (And get rid of that mockery known as the Trump FCC.)

Thune

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) slammed the Federal Communications Commission for its “unacceptable failure” to expand rural broadband service and close America’s rural-urban digital divide.

Thune’s comments were directed to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, appearing Thursday before the Senate Commerce Committee the South Dakota Republican chairs. Thune complained rural broadband expansion has slowed in his rural state, something he blamed on the FCC’s “inaction.” Thune criticized the FCC’s cuts to the Universal Service Fund, implemented as part of an effort to reduce the FCC’s budget.

“The FCC’s failure to ensure sufficient and predictable funding jeopardizes the vitality of America’s rural communities, and makes it much, much harder for our witnesses and others like them to deploy broadband,” Thune said in his opening remarks. “This is simply unacceptable.”

Thune claims the FCC’s cuts have increased by almost 25%, and there has been no study undertaken to determine the impact those cuts have on rural broadband expansion.

“Rural Americans should never be left behind their urban counterparts,” Thune added.

Pai defended the FCC’s actions under the Trump Administration, claiming the Commission is allocating nearly $6 billion for Connect America Fund subsidies and additional money for rural wireless projects. Pai claimed the FCC is providing $340 million to bring 4G LTE service to tribal lands, with additional funds available when those rural broadband subsidies are exhausted. Most of the money is being paid to subsidize for-profit companies.

Pai also claimed his broadband policy reforms, such as repealing net neutrality and other deregulation will stimulate new private investment independent of the Commission. To help that expansion, Pai suggested the recently proposed rules to streamline new cell tower approvals and ease up on historic preservation and environmental reviews will speed rural rollouts.

But both Sen. Thune and Chairman Pai have steadfastly opposed municipal and public broadband expansion projects designed to close the rural broadband gap in areas where for-profit ISPs have refused to serve without subsidies.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Four industry groups representing major internet providers and cable companies filed suit on Wednesday seeking to block California’s new law to mandate net neutrality rules.

The groups represent companies including AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, Comcast Corp and Charter Communications Inc. The lawsuit came after the U.S. Justice Department on Sunday filed its own lawsuit to block the new law.

The lawsuit filed by the American Cable Association, CTIA – The Wireless Association, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association and USTelecom – The Broadband Association, called California’s law a “classic example of unconstitutional state regulation” and urged the court to block it before it is set to take effect Jan. 1.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Sunday in a statement that the “the California legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy.”

This marked the latest clash between the Trump administration and California, which have sparred over environmental, immigration and other hot-button issues.

In December, the Federal Communications Commission said in repealing the Obama-era rules that it was preempting states from setting their own rules governing internet access.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said on Sunday the Trump Administration was ignoring “millions of Americans who voiced strong support for net neutrality rules.”

The Trump administration rules were a win for internet providers but opposed by companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc.

Under President Donald Trump, the FCC voted 3-2 in December along party lines to reverse rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization.

In August, 22 states and a coalition of trade groups representing major tech companies urged a federal appeals court to reinstate the rules. The states argue that the FCC cannot preempt state rule because it is not setting any limits on conduct by internet providers.

A federal judge on Monday set a Nov. 14 hearing in Sacramento on the Justice Department lawsuit.