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Cell Phone Tax Relief这一次,一个cell tax is being lifted. But don't count on such future luck.

ByMike Hogan

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Good news, telephone bill-payers: They've pulled the 3 percent federal excise tax, or FET, and will credit your payments next tax season. Originally levied a century ago to pay for the Spanish-American War, it wasnotrepealed by Congress. Rather, after losing in court five times, the Treasury Department simply gave up on it.

不要把你的退款。你需要我ncreases in the dozen or so other taxes on your cell bill (depending on your locale). Few people know what they're for, but most fit the rubric "state and local taxes." When lumped in with still-rising federal levies like the Universal Services Fund, they add 12 percent to the average American's cell bill and as much as 19 percent in many of our most populous states, says Scott Mackey, economist and partner with government affairs firmKimbell Sherman Ellis. For some reason, they're half again as high as sales taxes on other goods and services, and growing nine times faster. For a tax-by-tax breakdown in your state, checkCTIA- The Wireless Association'stax website.

Those are consumer taxes only and don't include groundbreaking new levies localities are charging communications providers that can't be passed on. Obviously, those companies are directly impacted, as are entrepreneurial ventures developing new cellular services. But it also turns out that we phone users are a price-sensitive bunch and reduce our phone usage by more than 1 percent for each percentage point increase in our bills. "When a state like Florida or New York imposes a 16 percent tax, demand is reduced by as much as 20 percent," Mackey recently told Congress.

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