- This also came up about five years ago. According to the Washington Post, by a vote of 420-2, on May 25, 2000, the "House passed a bill to repeal by October 2002 the 3 percent federal tax on long-distance telecommunications. It was enacted in 1898 as a luxury tax to help finance the Spanish-American War." The bill was never passed because it was subsumed under an appropriations bill that Bill Clinton vetoed. (Even though he said he agreed with the phone tax provision.)
- NOTE: The tax has not been in effect continuously since the Spanish -American war. Here is the complete history of the tax
Thursday, August 04, 2005
The group Americans for Tax Reform says they are backing an effort to abolish a 'temporary' tax on telephones originally imposed to help fund the Spanish-American War. The original concept of the telephone tax was to be a luxury tax. "At the time there were only 1,300 phones in the U.S., and only a wealthy few could afford phones."
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URBAN LEGEND
ReplyDeleteThe war tax was only in effect from 1898 to 1902. Another Fed tax on telephones was in place from 1914 to 1924. A third (current) was put in place in 1932.
Learn the facts before you post this stuff.