Blog | News & Information on Wireless Services & Telecommunications

Empire Follies

Posted: 12/15/09 by Mobile Future Team

Question: What do the following have in common: a state sales tax, a local sales tax, three transportation surcharges, a 911 fee, a utilities tax, an excise tax and a franchise tax?

Answer: They're all state and local fees paid by New York's mobile phone users.

Fortunately, U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is among those willing to say, Enough is enough. Weiner tells the New York Daily News that Big Apple mobile users pay 10 state and city taxes and fees - more than any other city in the nation. Combined, he says, this adds about 16 percent to the mobile phone bill. Among U.S. cities, only Chicago adds on a higher amount, with a 19 percent total. 

We've written before about the problem of excessive fees levied on mobile phone service  and bipartisan efforts in Congress to rein these in. Thank you, Congressman Weiner, for standing up for wireless consumers.

The IRS sees the light (or at least the wireless glow)

Posted: 07/02/09 by Molly Kocour

Earlier this week, the IRS announced it will no longer seek to tax "personal use of cell phones provided by employers."  Previously, the agency had considered making 25 percent of the costs for company-issued wireless devices taxable for employees. Understandably, in today's fast-paced environment where many people can't fully perform their jobs without using a wireless device, this idea raised a lot of red flags.

Thankfully, the agency realized that this statute of the tax code is "burdensome, poorly understood by taxpayers and difficult for the IRS to administer consistently," said IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, and "the passage of time, advances in technology and the nature of communications in the modern workplace have rendered this law obsolete."  

Now, about the rest of the tax code...

Please Don’t Stop The Music!

Posted: 06/12/09 by Chris Parandian

I wanted to expand on a previous post regarding the appetite of some states to impose discriminatory taxes on wireless consumers and the efforts of Congress to prevent those initiatives.

Most recently, seven Senators introduced the Mobile Wireless Tax Fairness Act of 2009.  The Senate bill seeks to put a 5 year moratorium on new taxes imposed on consumers.  The bill is similar to the House version - the "Cell Tax Fairness Act of 2009" (H.R. 1521) - that was introducd by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren.

Now more than ever Americans are depending on their wireless phones.  As we know, smartphones are no longer an item reserved for the rich and famous.  They are gadgets of necessity.  A recent story in The New York Times highlighted a woman who had been laid off and was relying on her newly-purchased iPhone to be alerted to the latest job opportunities at all times.  Her quote from the article says it all: "I absolutely got it for the job search."  On the other side of the coin, device manufacturers like RIM attribute their strong growth to their shift in focus from strictly the enterprise to the mass market.  The efforts have paid off as the BlackBerry Curve was the hottest device in the first quarter of 2009.

This is not the time to impose additional taxes on wireless users.  Everyday more Americans are enjoying the power of their "mini-computers."  Small businesses are thriving and creating a wireless ecosystem that has enabled consumers to personalize their devices like never before.  Please don't stop the music!

A taxing solution

Posted: 06/11/09 by Mobile Future Team

Good news from Washington:

U.S. lawmakers are setting the stage to halt state and local governments from imposing new taxes on cell-phone and mobile e-mail services.  Several Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee's commercial law panel agreed Tuesday that "discriminatory" cell-phone taxes, or taxes on wireless services alone, are unfair.

This is good news for many reasons, especially because, as Rep. Zoe Lofgren said yesterday, higher cell-phone taxes disproportionately impact lower-income people, who rely more on their cell phones for access to the Internet.  With Congress and the Obama Administration both looking to wireless technologies to spur economic growth, tax fairness should be a top priority.

Cell phone taxes: a New York state of mind

Posted: 04/13/09 by Mobile Future Team

If you're a cell phone user - and there are about 280 million of us in the U.S. - you've noticed those annoying taxes at the bottom of your bill.  Those small lines add up to a large hit to your wallet - nearly $21 billion in taxes and fees.

So it's especially dispiriting to read how the Empire State seems to have moved in the wrong direction for its 16+ million cell phone users:

"Eleven federal, state and city levies add as much as 33 percent to the cost of New Yorkers' cellphones, a [New York] Post analysis found.  A typical cell plan costing $49.99 a month comes with a total tax bill of $10.59 -- a 21.18 percent tax rate that helps give New York the fourth-highest cellphone taxes of any state.

"And cheaper plans favored by the frugal and poor are taxed at higher rates."

This is a bad move on so many levels.  Not only are New York's taxes terribly regressive, they also discriminate against what for many is an economic and public security lifeline.  If New York wants to encourage economic opportunity, it should can its discriminatory cell phone taxes.