Adios to a Phone Tax

Wall Street Journal on Line ^ | May 30, 2006 | Editor

[yoe]

The Spanish-American War was fought in 1898 and lasted less than eight months, but Americans still pay an excise tax on phone service that was imposed to finance it. Last week, a mere 108 years after the end of that conflict, the Bush Administration moved to terminate the levy. Its duration is something to keep in mind the next time you hear a politician call for a "temporary" tax.

Treasury Secretary John Snow said the Internal Revenue Service will no longer collect the 3% federal excise tax on long-distance phone calls and will offer refunds for the past three years. We'd like to think the Administration was acting out of principle. But the reality is that the courts -- most recently the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a decision last month -- have forced its hand with repeated rulings that the tax on long-distance is illegal in a telecom world in which calls are no longer priced based on distance. The IRS will continue to collect the tax on local calls, but Mr. Snow to his credit did express support for the idea of Congress passing legislation to repeal the tax entirely.

[snip] The last time Congress came close to ending this charade was 2000, when majorities in both the House and the Senate voted for repeal, which President Clinton vetoed.

[yoe]

The Gore Tax is still there..........

[isthisnickcool]

Yep, nuke the Gore tax.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything negative about Gore beacuse he did kill Manbearpig and people are super-stoked on him even if they don't know it.

[Red Badger]

YOUR TIME IS UP. PLEASE DEPOSIT $18 BILLION FOR CONTINUED CONNECTION. THANK YOU FOR USING AT&T................

[mnehring]

The worst part about the 'Gore Tax' is that it authorized the FCC to levy any fees on telecom services as it sees fit, without having to go back to congress to authorize it. Although titled 'fees' it is just a backdoor tax.

[Red Badger]

Heck! for that amount of money they could have built NEW schools for every district in the US and posessions.........

[taxcontrol]

Must be winter in Hades. The government repealed a tax.

[jebeier]

The Spanish/American War is over?!?

Did we win?

[spikeytx86]

Are you serial?

[CSM]

Be cereal!

[Crispus Attucks Patriot]

Get rid of the entire income taxation system, period. Its a communistic idea straight from Marx's pen.

Besides, the Sixteenth Amendment was never ratified by the senate.

[Ptaz]

Yep. I've always said if the American Public finally figures out all the extra taxes we pay and what they amount to, we'll have a revolt in this country that would make the Boston Tea Party planners proud.

[sheana]

I would rather they left the tax and use it to fight the current Mexican/American war.

hahahahahahahahahaha

[Young Werther]

The mantra of the Liberal is "lie, cheat and steal" in the name of Equality. There is NO Gore Tax! Check out the mealy mouthed, (considering the source is Gore I'm not suprised), FEE at:

Gored!

[isthisnickcool]

See the most really special and gosh darn important film of the year! "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore. See what people are saying about this important film!

The New York Times Raves: The part where the polar ice cap melts and the Earth starts wobbling all over the place and everyone gets flung off in to space was stunning!"

From the founders of google: "We saw the film an we like, you know, really, you know, think that Al Gore is like so really cool. So we deleted anything bad about the movie from google and left just the good stuff. Just like we do for all that conservative stuff, we get rid of it."

All the scientists everywhere: "As all the scientists everywhere we have come together to say that 200% of us say that global warming is real! 200% is a really big number! We know, because we are all the scientists everywhere!"

Hillary Clinton, The Smartest Woman in the World: "I believe that if you have a globe and you touch it and it's warm then we really have a problem. I touched Bill's penis once and it was warm so I never touched it again!"

People living in coastal areas: Eiiiii!!!! Glub Glub Glub!!! Drown, drown, drown. Die die die....

Owners of the 12 theatres showing the movie: Be sure to see this important Al Gore movie today because global warming will kill you soon and you will miss a really good and important movie! Please see the movie because we need the money after we invested in Air America and Current TV.

[CSM]

I'm dissappointed in your utterly ignoring the opinion of DU! ;).... (The rest were pretty good tho'.)

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

Yeah. So when will the reimbursment check come in the mail...
I'M WAITING...I'M...WAITING...i'm...waiting...i'm...hmmmm...waiting...