The Washington Examiner posted an article today about a recent policy change from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The article reports:

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a proposed rulemaking that would require all publicly-owned utility companies that own transmission lines “to revise” their rates to account for the benefits they received under the tax reform package.

The tax reform bill passed last December cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent beginning in 2018. A number of states’ energy commissions have already directed the utilities they regulate at the retail level to account for the changes and grant credits to ratepayers.

…FERC also issued a policy statement on Thursday that provided ratemaking guidance for all companies under FERC’s jurisdiction to account for the tax benefits they received. Those companies include public utilities, owners and operators of natural gas and oil pipelines.

FERC also acted on 46 show-cause investigations, directing certain public utilities whose transmission tariffs used a tax rate of 35 percent to reduce their tax rates to 21 percent, or show why they did not need to do so.

As much as I generally don’t like federal regulations, if that is what it takes to pass the tax savings of publicly-owned utility companies on to their customers, then I support the regulations.