What is a telephone and telegraph company?
If a company is a telephone and telegraph company, which of its property should be centrally valued and certified by the DOR and which of its property should be valued by the municipality where it is located? Finally, and perhaps most dramatically, even if a company enjoys telephone and telegraph status, if it is not a corporation, is it nevertheless entitled to the “corporate” exemption under Chapter 59, Section 5, Clause 16. What is a telephone and telegraph company? The ATB lowered the high bar set by the DOR on this question and ruled that the test was not one of “exclusivity” but rather “substantiality.” In other words was the company substantially engaged in providing telephone services or were such activities “merely trivial or incidental to the main business?” The ATB found that RCN’s provision of telephone services was substantial enough for the company to be treated as a telephone and telegraph company. The ATB reached this conclusion by analyzing RCN from four different pers
