The only company that charges more taxes than the governement...is your traditional phone company. The only company that has a bill harder to understand than the IRS tax code...is your traditional phone company. I was reviewing a customer's bill from a large, traditional phone company and I was, as always, dumbfounded by all the extra little fees that you have to pay over the 'normal' services.
These extra fees included:
- Federal Access Charge $6.38 per access line
- Access Recovery Charge $1 per access line
- Federal Excise at 3%
- State Sales Tax at 6%
- Local 911 at $1 per access line
- Facility Relocation Cost Recovery Fee at $.20 per access line
- Federal Universal Service Fund at 16.8174%
- Federal Service Fund at 16.1%
What is interesting is, I couldn't even figure out how the taxes where calculated. Now, I didn't call the traditional phone company (I have better things to do than wait on hold), but I did open up a spreadsheet and did some simple calculations. After 10 minutes... I have NO idea how they even got these numbers. The only tax I figured out was the State Sales tax was $.30 from the 6% of the $5 modem rental. Other than that, to get to the $45.46, I did simple math and divided them up by the number of lines.
I did a couple of quick google searches to see if the web had anything to say. Not really. Here are two links for the results that provided no information.
http://www.centurylink.com/help/index.php?assetid=53
If you want to sift through the Idaho PUC rulings and daunting documents, you can find them here: http://www.puc.idaho.gov/TELECOM/TELECOM.HTM
I always tell our potential customers that I can save them at least 10% on their phone bill just in taxes. Apparently, I need to update my sales pitch to 30%. With our business VoIP telephone service, you have just 2 fees. We have to contribute as a voice provider to the Universal Service Fund at 8.4% and we have the e911 fee. We even disclose those in the quote and sales orders for all our customers so there isn't any calls when the first bill hits their inbox.
We saved this customer approximately $1,300 per year in savings by switching to ATG|voice. That includes phone service, vfax, ADSL, Edgemarc modem/router rental, static IP and a new VoIP phone on every desk. With this set up the customer has a state of the art phone system with an enterprise class network and our convenient virtual fax service. Not bad ... if you're us.
Be sure to contact ATG|voice at 877-747-4284 for all your voice, data, and media needs. We would be pleased to provide you a free quote and see if we can save your business money every month.
If you want to sift through the Idaho PUC rulings and daunting documents, you can find them here: http://www.puc.idaho.gov/TELECOM/TELECOM.HTM
I always tell our potential customers that I can save them at least 10% on their phone bill just in taxes. Apparently, I need to update my sales pitch to 30%. With our business VoIP telephone service, you have just 2 fees. We have to contribute as a voice provider to the Universal Service Fund at 8.4% and we have the e911 fee. We even disclose those in the quote and sales orders for all our customers so there isn't any calls when the first bill hits their inbox.
We saved this customer approximately $1,300 per year in savings by switching to ATG|voice. That includes phone service, vfax, ADSL, Edgemarc modem/router rental, static IP and a new VoIP phone on every desk. With this set up the customer has a state of the art phone system with an enterprise class network and our convenient virtual fax service. Not bad ... if you're us.
Be sure to contact ATG|voice at 877-747-4284 for all your voice, data, and media needs. We would be pleased to provide you a free quote and see if we can save your business money every month.