Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Ruling on Federal Excise Tax on VoIP

Nine Federal Appeals courts have found the 3% Federal Excise Tax on cell phones to be illegal. Now CITA has to figure out how to stop collecting it and get refunds from the US Treasury (to the tune of $9B). ConsumersAffairs.org reports that 80% of cell customers are with the Big 4 - Cingular, VZW, Sprint-Nextel, T-Mobile. E911, CALEA, LNP and Number Pooling are Expenses, yet are line-item charges added to your cell phone bill. You would think that consumers would get mad about an additional 17% being added to the bill - much of which is NOT tax but recovery fees. I guess consumers are used to getting screwed by Big Business (both as customers and employees).

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