Tax on Phone Bill

For those of you who are unhappy with Republicans on Capitol Hill this blog should give you something to smile about. Republican members of Congress are fighting to remove a 3% tax that is on your phone bill. This tax has been there since 1898. It was placed there to help pay for the Spanish-American War. In case you didn't know, that war has been over for more than 108 years. Yet we are still paying taxes to support it. Rep. Gary Miller of California recently introduced legislation in the House — supported by 98 co-sponsors — aimed at repealing the tax. The general excise tax has so far cost consumers about $300 billion, says the Congressional Research Service. The entire Spanish-American War cost only about $6 billion, adjusted for inflation. For those of you who complain about the cost of the War on Terror and how much it costs, look back in history and you will find wars are very expensive. I don't know about your phone bill, but mine includes so many fees and taxes and I don't know what most of them are. I could use a 3% reduction on my phone bill. None of us should be paying anything for a war that ended over 100 years ago. Call your representative in Congress and urge them to support this legislation.