At long last--tax relief!It took 108 years, five appeals-court rulings, and roughly a decade of congressional protests, but on May 26 outgoing U.S. Treasury U.S. Treasury Created in 1798, the United States Department of the Treasury is the government (Cabinet) department responsible for issuing all Treasury bonds, notes and bills. Some of the government branches operating under the U.S. Treasury umbrella include the IRS, U.S. Secretary John Snow announced that the federal government will finally permit the 1898 telephone tax to expire. Initially imposed to raise revenue for the Spanish-American War Spanish-American War, 1898, brief conflict between Spain and the United States arising out of Spanish policies in Cuba. It was, to a large degree, brought about by the efforts of U.S. expansionists. , the telephone excise tax Excise Tax 1. An indirect tax charged on the sale of a particular good. 2. A penalty tax applied to ineligible transactions in retirement accounts. This penalty is assessed by and paid to the IRS. Notes: 1. was revised in 1965 to permit the feds "to tax long-distance calls based on elapsed time e·lapsed time n. The measured duration of an event. Noun 1. elapsed time - the time that elapses while some event is occurring , distance, or both," observed the Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune Daily newspaper published in Chicago. The Tribune is one of the leading U.S. newspapers and long has been the dominant voice of the Midwest. Founded in 1847, it was bought in 1855 by six partners, including Joseph Medill (1823–99), who made the paper . "In 2005, the Internal Revenue Service insisted both types of calls were taxable. The courts ruled the tax did not apply to calls billed in time increments or those covered by a flat-rate plan, as most calls currently are." Service carriers were required to collect a three-percent excise tax and remit it to the federal government. Several carriers, including OfficeMax Inc. and Hewlett-Packard, led the legal challenge to the tax. Just prior to leaving office, Snow grudgingly announced that the Bush administration is "conceding the issue," and agreed to refund about $13 billion collected through the illegal tax over the past three years. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion