"Adios" to Spanish-American War Phone Tax

Believe it or not, if you're an American, you've been paying a 3% excise tax on all of your long distance calls to finance the Spanish-American war (yup--the same war that ended years before Theodore Veil founded the first long-distance networking firm, AT&T). This week, that tax has been officially repealed, hinting that the old war has finally been paid for, some 108 years later. Or, perhaps more importantly, that your long-distance carrier no longer has the burden of shuffling 3% of their revenue over to Uncle Sam.

Me? I've been a VoIP user for almost four years now, allowing me to circumvent the excise penalty. I'm not sure how much I saved, though. Of course, with VoIP services becoming so popular, the long-term feasibility of this tax was in question anyway. Long distance calling is a dying business, after all. It's only a matter of time before regulators go after VoIP for tax revenue. Oh wait--they already have...

Tags: taxes, Ted Wallingford, TedWallingford, voip