T-Mobile Is 2nd Carrier to Ask Mississippi Court for Broadband Tax Exemption

T-Mobile is asking the Mississippi Supreme Court, through an interlocutory appeal, to reverse a lower state court decision affirming Jasper County’s denial of T-Mobile’s request for a statutory tax exemption on all its qualified broadband equipment, said T-Mobile’s petition Tuesday (docket 2023-3967). Since the broadband exemption was first enacted in 2002, counties throughout Mississippi, including Jasper, have granted T-Mobile the exemption, it said. But for the 2022 tax year, Jasper, acting on “the erroneous legal advice” of a consultant, Cell Tower Solutions, for the first time denied T-Mobile the broadband exemption “for every single item of T-Mobile's equipment that undisputedly meets the plain language” of the statute, it said. Jasper “has never disputed that T-Mobile's equipment at issue meets the criteria” of the broadband exemption, it said. The county’s only reason for its “unprecedented denial” was that T-Mobile's equipment didn’t meet the exemption’s "intent," it said. When T-Mobile challenged the denial in state court, the county’s only defense was that it simply didn’t know if the exemption applied, it said. But “the failure to know something is not evidence,” it said. AT&T filed a similar challenge earlier in the week (see 2312260001).