I keep a honeypot in the house.
It's my old land line. My dialtone service from Verizon.
Costs me all of $7.40 a month.
It'll go up soon.
In March, 2009.
To $7.87 a month.
I have a generous local calling allowance on the line.
0.25.
Total.
At 0.05 per minute, that's five minutes in local calls before I have to pay anything beyond my $7.40.
I had to fight like hell to get Verizon to give me this rate.
The first-line sales rep had never heard of it.
Her manager had, however.
It has nothing on it.
- No call waiting.
- No calling plan.
- No caller ID.
- No long distance.
- No toll calling.
It exists in my house for one purpose: Every bank, car dealer, political party, charity, and window replacement company in the country uses it to call me.
And I call 800 numbers on it.
Here's the part that galls me:
The telephone service costs me $7.40.
The taxes and fees are $8.42.
My monthly phone bill is $15.82, and over half of it is made up of taxes and fees.
- 0.41 Federal Excise Tax
- 0.35 PA Gross Receipts Surcharge
- 0.08 PA Relay Surcharge
- 1.00 E911
- 0.67 Federal Universal Service Fee
- 5.91 Federal Subscriber Line Charge
There was a time when a lot of this stuff didn't exist, or when it existed, it was absorbed by the telephone companies.
It was called overhead.
Now, it's a pass-through.
According to my phone bill:
- The 5.91 "Federal Subscriber Line Charge funds part of the cost of providing long distance companies access to local telephone networks." Otherwise......what? The long distance companies would have to pay more for access to the local telephone networks?
- The 0.67 "Federal Universal Service Fee helps keep telephone service affordable for high cost areas, rural health care providers, and library internet access." It costs less to wire libraries and farms with telephone service than it does to let long-distance companies connect to local telephone networks?
- The 1.00 "E911 charge funds my community's 911 system." According to my phone bill, this fee is sent to my state/county treasury.
- The massive .08 "PA Relay Surcharge funds telecommunications service for people with disabilities."
- The 0.41 Federal Excise Tax and the 0.35 PA Gross Receipts Surcharge just plain suck.
There's a shiny pony in all this horse manure, if I could just figure out how to play it: There's enough altruism in some of these fees, I should be allowed to deduct it under charitable contributions on my income tax.
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