Phone Bill Itemization: I'm A Little Pissed To Be Paying Monthly For The Spanish-American War
I need to have a land-line for when I appear by phone on radio shows.
Scott Wilson wrote in the LA Times in 2012 about five fees that phone companies charge. Here's one:
Federal excise tax. In 1898, Congress placed this 3% tax on phone bills "temporarily" to help pay for the Spanish-American War. It was repealed or expired three times over the last century, but each time it was reinstated by Congress. After court challenges, it was eliminated in 2006 on long distance and cellphone service, yet remains on local land-line bills.
"Temporary" taxes rarely are.
And another that pisses me off -- from the scumbag phone company:
Regulatory Cost Recovery and carrier cost recovery fee. Despite their official-sounding descriptions, these are not taxes or required by the government. The money goes to your phone company. "These are additional charges which are essentially a way to hide rate increases," said Christopher White, chairman of the telecommunication committee with the National Assn. of State Utility Consumer Advocates.
"Temporary" taxes rarely are.
Yep, taxes are temporary like death is temporary.
Charles at April 5, 2013 2:32 PM
SDG&E, the power/gas company for San Diego, has been charging us some fees forever for things like undergrounding projects. I've been paying this fee my entire adult life, and (barring moving away) will pay it until I die.
A couple years ago they did one small zone in each city district as a quick "Look! Progress!" step, but since then the progress has slowed to a crawl. There're city pages you can use to see which areas are planned for when:
http://citymaps.sandiego.gov/imf/imf.jsp?site=uuc
When I first checked my area nearly 10 years ago now, it was due to start either last year or this and be done either this year or next. Pretty soon I started to notice that every few months, they'd push the schedule out a couple years. At this point, it has now been set to start in 2049 and finish in 2051. So (again, barring my moving) I'll pay towards this and likely die before it ever gets done. Even assuming they don't push it back even further.
What really drives me nuts is that it's not really more then a few man-months of work per area. Just hire more crews temporarily and get the damn work done in our lifetimes so that we can actually use the improved infrastructure we're paying for.
Miguelitosd at April 5, 2013 6:23 PM
My Dad actually worked for GTE from 1957 until he retired right after it become part of Verizon, in about 1997. Would be interesting to hear what he would say about this stuff... probably that it's still pretty expensive to maintain all those poles out there. (He was an actual pole-climbing system repairman in the 1960s and early 70s.)
Why Verizon et al couldn't just mass-cellularize all of their landline service in a few years, and make all those poles and hanging cables obsolete, is beyond me. Of course, that would probably cost more money as well... time for a new 'temp' tax! ;-)
qdpsteve at April 6, 2013 4:13 PM
There's a story I recall from when I lived in Florida, in the 1980s, that illustrates the extent to which the state of Florida subsidizes Disney. What's this got to do with utilities? Florida Power & Light formed a real estate investing partnership with Disney called Arvada. When it made money, Disney got most of the profits. When it lost money after the 1987 stock market crash, FP&L asked for and got an electric rate increase from the state to cover the losses.
Cousin Dave at April 8, 2013 7:08 AM
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