East Wenatchee Phone Utility Tax Gets Repealed

East Wenatchee City Council unanimously decided to repeal their phone utility tax on July 5, after noticing their dwindling returns year after year. 

The city started looking into other tax revenue options after trying to see why their phone utility tax funds kept declining. After a while, East Wenatchee Mayor Jerrilea Crawford felt that the city was wasting their time on studying this decline.

“It's steadily been declining year after year, to the point where we were trying to determine what was making this decline,” Crawford Explained. “We felt it would be better just to repeal the tax, and not have that as a burden on our citizens to have to worry about that particular tax.”

This tax was applied to all East Wenatchee residents who use mobile or landline cell services within city limits, with funds being used towards general city services.

The annual phone utility tax revenue is projected to be $131,274, compared to their peak $403,294 revenue year in 2018.

The tax was previously receiving 6% of total gross income of businesses transmitting/selling electric energy

This ordinance becomes effective Oct. 1, 2022 for the city’s finance department to properly notify all businesses who previously sent funds to the city.

They never found the reason behind the declining tax return, only that other cities were following suit.