By Richard Billies of AllThingsPoliticalToday.com
I went through our phone bill the other and boy was I shocked by the number of different taxes on the services provided by the phone company. This bill was for our land-line service. Our service is for one voice line and one fax/data line.
We live in central Virginia so we have several taxes that pertain to the state but I have no doubt that your state has many of the same taxes and fees. You may even have city or county taxes, or even both.
It seems that our telecom services have become a major source of revenue for all levels of our government. The insidious thing is that no one really combs through their phone bill unless the total cost is unusually higher than normal. I suspect that the first place that people peruse is the long distance charges. I’m absolutely sure that the last thing that most of us does is go through and enumerate the number and cost of the taxes on our bill.
Having said all of that, let’s go through my current phone bill from Century Link, our land-line carrier. I should point out in advance that this stand-alone service and is not bundled with any other services such as cable television or internet services.
My phone bill was a total of $101.01, spread over 7 pages of information. Our phone service is broken up into three component parts: CenturyLink Packages, CenturyLink Local Services and CenturyLink Long Distance Services.
Of the 7 pages of our bill, there were 2 pages filled with small type that detailed how
CenturyLink was protecting us from cramming. This is a rather self-promoting part of the bill that benefits your phone company by locking you into their tight embrace. It can be an annoying occurence if it happens to you but believe me they are going to make sure that you remain with them.
Then, there was a section devoted to telling me that we were not being charged correctly for certain services. It was explained in a way that only a government bean-counter would love. I’m sure that’s why it was written that way, to satisfy the regulators.
After some boiler-plate copy about late-payment of bills, we got down to the meat of the matter: the actual charges.
The first section of the charges is for CenturyLink Packages. We have two lines, which have been detailed. Our voice line has a package that includes 15 different services. Trust me, you take them all or none. There is no “Chinese Menu” at the phone company. Here is where the first tax appears: $2.13 for a sales tax to the Commonwealth of Virginia. This is a 4.4% tax. Fully half of our bill is consumed by this land line service.
The second component of our bill is for CenturyLink Local services. Here’s the area that they get you with taxes for anybody and everybody! Starting at the top we have a Subscriber Line Charge-Interstate. The FCC says that this is an access charge that the phone company charges you to use their network. This is followed by a Non-Telecom Services Surcharge. This surcharge is assessed on customer accounts that subscribe to Voicemail or Lineguard, unique services for CenturyLink. I have no doubt that other phone companies have similar charges.
Since we have a second line for a fax, we not only get charged for that line but we get hit with the Subscriber Line Charge-Interstate again. Then the laundry list of taxes and fees begins. We have an Albemarle County Right-of way fee. I believe that is a charge for “air-rights” for the overhead wires. There is a Federal Excise Tax, a Universal Service Fund Surcharge, anotherVirginia Sales Tax and a a Virginia State 911 Tax. These taxes, fees and surcharges amount to around $15.7% of our total bill.
A brief explanation is in order. The Federal Excise Tax was first imposed during the Spanish-American War in 1898. It has been repealed and reinstated several times in the intervening years.
The Universal Service Fund Surcharge is a typical share-the-wealth scheme pertpertrated by the Federal government on an unsuspecting public. It was designed to take from the business and residential phone users and give to schools, classrooms, health care providers, and libraries for advanced telecommunications services.
But wait! We’re not done yet. We now get to CenturyLink Long Distance Services. We have a Carrier Cost Recovery Fee. This fee is for the carrier to recover costs associated with their long distance service. We get to pay it twice because we have two lines. For those who haven’t been counting we have 3 fees, 3 surcharges, 2 charges and 5 sales taxes for a grand total of 13 various additional charges. These totaled $23.69 or 23.5%.
Your phone service whether it’s land line based or wireless is a veritable bonanza for all levels of our government. Wherever he is, Alexander Graham Bell is probably scratching his head in wonderment.
We then have yet another Virginia Sales Tax followed by another Universal Service Fund Surcharge.
