2013 Fall Newsletter

cations transmission equipment as the statute requires. It is not necessary to operate aPSTN, the court noted, to meet this criterion. Second, the purpose of the company's VoIP service is to provide customers with the capability of making telephone calls. Whether a company uses its own technology or purchases it from another party, the court said, it is still providing telephone service to its customers. "The relationship between [the cable company] and [its PSTN supplier] is analogous to awholesaler– retailer relationship,'' the court said. The court also rejected the cable company's argument that because its cable network was used primar- ily to carry television programming, it should still be assessed locally. The statutes require the De- partment of Revenue to assess all telecommunications companies, the court said, further noting that there was nothing in the statutes that refers to predominant use of equipment. ( CableOne,Inc. v.ArizonaDepartment of Revenue, Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division One, No. 1 CA-TX 12-0006, June 11, 2013) Assessor Conduct A taxpayer's request that a Florida assessment official be held in contempt of court has been denied by the state appellate court. The taxpayer had sought the penalty because its property was not clas- sified in subsequent tax years the way a court had ordered in the last appeal. The property is part of a subdivision that borders a lake. While lakefront residences have been built on some of the nearby parcels, the subject property is mostly covered by an orange grove. In an ap- peal for the 2008 tax year, the trial court determined that the taxpayer's property should be cate- gorized as agricultural. The court had made t h e same determination in the appeals for the 2006 and 2007 tax years. In the 2008 case, the court instructed that the land should be classified as agri- cultural until there was evidence that the use had changed. For the 2009 and 2010 tax years, how– ever, the property was still recorded as vacant lakefront and agricultural property. TheFlorida appellate court stated the property appraiser couldnotbeheld in contempt in the concluded 2008 case because he had complied with the court's orderby issuingarefund. The 2009 and 2010 clas- sifications related to different tax years which needed to be appealed separately. If the taxpayer be- lieved that the property appraiser had acted improperly in classifying its property, then the appropriate remedy as provided by Florida statuteswould be toseekpayment of the taxpayer's litigation fees and costs. ( Spencer Estates ofFlorida, LLC v. Havill, Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District, Case No. SD12- 315, Dec embe r 28, 2012)

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Fall 2013 Newsletter of the FCIAAO