My friend Keith received this email – investigated and found that it was true.

This was sent by a friend. Thought some of you might be interested.

You may or may not know that the Tennessee House signed a bill on May 18th regarding the collection of sales tax on ISP services. This legislation was enacted in response to the Tennessee Court of Appeals' 2003 ruling that charges for Internet access services are not subject to sales tax in Tennessee.

The catch is your cable provider is only required to refund the money to you if you REQUEST a refund. IT IS NOT AN AUTOMATIC REFUND. You only have until July 17th to request a refund from your ISP of all sales tax they collected from you back through December 2000.

For documentation of this, see www.tennessee.gov/revenue to get the lowdown. Look in the top left corner under "Hot Topics" and click on "Internet Access: Procedure for Claiming Refunds of Sales Tax." I have obtained the websites for two cable providers, Bell South and Comcast. If you have your cable service through another company, you will need to call them to get the website where you can download and print out your request for a refund.

I don't think a lot of people know about this and I don't believe the state is really advertising this...they don't refund the money from the state to the ISP unless the ISP forwards documentation that they have refunded the tax...so the consumer is just out of luck if he doesn't know. This is one e-mail I would definitely pass on to all of your friends and family in TN so that they can also receive the money the ISP and state owe them.

Comcast: www.comcast.com/tnisprefund/

Charter: told to fill out this form - http://www.tennessee.gov/revenue/forms/sales/f1403301.pdf and send to state