The Advocate, the league's newsletter that was mailed to credit union members this week, notes that Zions Bank has several subsidiaries registered as Nevada corporations. It also mentions news reports in recent months that "26 Wisconsin banks have agreed to repay $23 million in back taxes due to . . . the improper use of Nevada corporations."
The newsletter claims no illegality and the Wisconsin banks in question have denied wrongdoing. But the newsletter notes the irony that there is no corporate income tax in Nevada and points out the banks' attempts to force the larger nonprofit credit unions to pay taxes on their profits.
Zions President and CEO Scott Anderson says the claim is ludicrous because Zions' $3 billion Nevada State Bank is the fourth-largest bank in Nevada. He said Zions paid $220 million in state and federal taxes in 2003 and estimates another $233 million in 2004.
Meanwhile: The credit unions may be sowing sour grapes because they have not fared well in recent elections, bank advocates say. Most of the banker-backed legislative candidates won in November as well as the new leadership elected in the Legislature.
Also, a Nov. 24, 2004, letter from Utah League of Credit Unions President Scott Simpson to then-Gov.-elect Jon Huntsman Jr. urged the dismissal of Financial Institutions Commissioner Edward Leary.
"Utah's credit unions believe that their interests and their development and meeting the needs of Utahns have been hampered by the Department of Financial Institutions and the commissioner," the letter states.
Leary is one of the few state department heads from the previous administration that Huntsman decided to retain.
Customer service: Matt Zalkind, a cello student attending Juilliard on scholarship, almost had to return to school without his cello after it disappeared on a Southwest Airlines flight to Salt Lake City from Los Angeles, where he had gone over the Christmas vacation to visit his cancer-stricken grandfather.
Zalkind, the son of Utah Symphony musicians Larry and Roberta Zalkind, had filed a police report and was almost resigned to returning to school celloless when he received a call nearly a week later from officials at America West Airlines in Las Vegas complaining that they had been "tripping over this big blue thing for five days."
The cello was finally returned, but Southwest refused to refund the $50-each-way special handling fee.
Self-censoring: At the statehood day celebration last week, Huntsman told the crowd that he and Jazz star Andrei Kirilenko went to a movie together. The movie, he said, was called, "Meet the - [pause] - I can't remember the name of the family."
Remedial spelling classes: The parents of Alta High School students might be concerned about the their teens' education if they noticed the electronic message on the school's marquee during the Christmas break that read "Happy Hollidays."
prolly@sltrib.com
