Judge Rules, Local TV Station is Not High Tech
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It appears that one DC TV station thought they were a high tech company and deserved a tax break.
Unfortunately, a judge did not agree and now it will cost them.
Washington NBC station WRC will have to pay the District government nearly $79,000 in back taxes after a DC judge ruled the television station does not qualify for breaks the city gives to high-tech businesses.
WRC was ordered to pay up after it unsuccessfully argued its tax bill in the DC Court of Appeals, Washington Business Journal reports.
The station argued it was eligible for tax incentives the District first offered in 2000 to prevent losing invenstments from technology firms to Northern Virginia, which has a robust high-tech economy.
According to the opinion, WRC, which is owned and operated by NBCUniversal, argued it derived at least 51 percent of its revenue from “information and communication technologies, equipment and systems that involve advanced computer software and hardware, data processing, visualization technologies, or human interface technologies, whether deployed on the internet or other electronic or digital media.”
“This statement of purpose, we observe, contains no hint that the DC Council saw advantage in providing tax exemptions to companies that merely use technology in their business,” the judges wrote.
So let this be a lesson to other local stations, just because you have the internet and your News Director is using at Tinder, it doesn't make you a high tech company.
