Dear editor:
Please accept my apology if the content of this letter is "no news" to your readers, but I was surprised to learn of a benefit from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, aka "Trump tax cut" of which I was not aware.
I had not looked at an itemized statement of our electric bill in several months since we have the charge for the Entergy bill drafted from our checking account each month; but our daughter suggested we take a look at it. She pointed out the line item: Tax Cuts & Jobs Act Credit; which applied a credit to our June bill in the amount of: $41.99. The same credit was applied to our "Nightwatcher" light billing for an additional $2.65. That brought the total tax credit for the month to: $44.64.
I looked into the matter a little further and discovered a press release by Entergy Arkansas on Feb. 28, 2018, which stated that "The utility will pass tax reform savings to customers." It further stated that "residential customers will see a savings of an estimated $20 per month for every 1,000 kWh consumed from April 2018 to December 2019." That was a very accurate estimate in my case. The average savings on my account was 19.8 percent for the three months the tax cut has been in effect.
The press release further stated that "Business customers also will see significant bill reductions. ... " This statement is also supported by the fact that the June Entergy bill for my daughter's small business showed a savings of about $200.
I also gave a cursory inspection to statements by some other energy companies as to what their policies would be regarding the tax cut and concluded that the Entergy Arkansas estimate was very generous in comparison.
Of course, some of your readers might agree with Nancy Pelosi and consider these amounts to be chump change, but this "chump" thinks that he and his spouse can manage to put these savings to some useful purpose.
Jerry Byram
Pearcy
Editorial on 06/17/2018