Strangely enough, many of us still have “land line” telephones for various reasons: features, security, etc. I guess I haven’t paid much attention to the mark-up from the basic, advertised ATT charge.

I have the Complete Choice service that has a lot of bells and whistles for the advertised price of $33 a month – a pretty good deal, since ATT has to maintain those little copper wires that bring the signal to my house.

$33 a month, but my bill is $45.70, a whopping 38.4% markup.
Here’s how it breaks down:
Federal Universal Service Fee $0.61
Federal Subscriber Line Charge $6.50
Federal Excise Tax $1.19
TN- State/Local Tax $3.75 (which is 11.36% of the base rate)
Emergency 911 Service $0.65

This is a quiet tax. From the thickness of the telephone book, not many folks have a big enough problem with it to do anything about it.