By Shelley Davis
Enquirer Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - That little dish on the rooftop could get more expensive to operate. But not the cable TV box.

Gov. Bob Taft wanted to tax both satellite TV and cable TV services. But the Ohio House only slapped the sales tax on satellite dishes and left the cable box alone.

"To tax satellite customers creates an unfair, near-monopoly advantage for local cable companies," said Robert Mercer, spokesman for DirecTV, the nation's second largest satellite service provider.

For a DirecTV satellite package of 125 channels, including local channels and seven HBO channels, customers would pay $37.43 in taxes per year on top of their $52 per month fee.

That's OK with Edward Kozelek, vice president of the Ohio Cable Telecommunications Association.He said sales tax on cable TV amounted to double taxation on cable customers, who already pay a local fee from which satellite customers are exempt.

Grover Norquist, president of the lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, wrote to legislators that a tax on satellite TV is the brainchild of its competitor, the cable industry. He compared the idea to "Ford lobbying to tax Chrysler."

Norquist said the move by the cable lobbying groups is one of many examples of a group trying to foist taxes onto their competitors.

"We never want them to compete on that basis -using politicians to help them win the competition," he said.

Mercer said state lawmakers across the country are increasingly trying to bring in money by imposing taxes and fees on satellite service providers.

"It's another one of cable's many tactics to find a way to compete with the satellite companies," he said. "They can't compete in price and value for customers, or in choice or signal quality, so they have to look for other ways to keep us at bay."

Kozelek said legislators were simply trying to be fair, and not penalize the cable industry, which he pointed out employs a lot of people in Ohio. "It's a substantially similar service, and when that happens, you have to start looking to whether there are any disparities in how they are treated and taxed," Kozelek said. "I think lawmakers realized these are two very similar services that are treated very differently."

At the end of 2002, 62 percent of Ohio households subscribed to a cable service, and 13 percent used a satellite service, according to Media Business Corp, an independent media research firm.

Mercer said cable lobbyists are missing the point when they claim the local franchise fees put their customers at a disadvantage.

Mercer said courts have ruled franchise fees are not a tax but a fee for doing business in a community. The money would cover the cost of things like digging trenches for cable lines, he said. Satellites transmit a signal directly to the customer, so there's no reason to pay a local fee.

Kozelek said he isn't surprised DirecTV would use that argument.

"Of course, the satellite guys are going to say that, because they don't really have any valid argument for why they pay little, if any, fees in the state of Ohio," he said.

E-mail davis.1508@osu.edu