A refund on electric bills?

Utah Power customers could receive a $50 million refund if the state Committee of Consumer Services has its way.

The consumer committee asked state regulators Thursday to force PacifiCorp, Utah Power's parent company, to return more than $50 million to Utah ratepayers.

The committee maintains that PacifiCorp wrongfully collected in its electricity rates more money than was needed to pay income taxes.

After ScottishPower purchased PacifiCorp in 1999, it set up a holding company to collect the anticipated tax costs of each of its subsidiaries, including PacifiCorp, according to Reed Warnick, an attorney representing the consumer committee.

The subsidiaries computed their tax costs as if they were stand-alone entities and then paid their tax liability to PacifiCorp Holding Inc. However, PacifiCorp Holding Inc. consolidated the tax liability of the subsidiaries, Warnick said, netting member losses against the gains of others.

"In this case, it makes a huge difference as to what the liability of those members would have been if they had each filed individually," Warnick said. "That creates a large sum of money. It's not just paper."

Those savings were supposed to be redirected back to profitable subsidiaries, Warnick said, but in the case of PacifiCorp they never were.

A 2004 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission audit ordered that $225.7 million in misappropriated monies be re-allocated back to PacifiCorp.

The consumer committee estimates that more than $50 million of that amount was taken from Utah ratepayers.

"The committee's argument is, those monies should have never been collected in rates in the first place," Warnick said. "We want those monies returned to ratepayers."

But Dave Eskelsen, a spokesman for PacifiCorp, said the company is puzzled by the consumer committee's action.

"The SEC did not require any cash transfers to take place into or out of PacifiCorp," Eskelsen said. "And there were no changes to the company's audited financial results."

Eskelsen said the company will be able to demonstrate clearly that ratepayer monies have been used properly.