Table of Contents
Scope
This article states common taxes and fees you can find on your invoice and their descriptions.
Cost Recovery Surcharge
Cost Recovery Surcharge is not a government tax, but a fee collected and retained to recover government compliance costs, charges imposed by other carriers for calls between our customers and theirs, and by 3rd parties for network facilities and services we purchase to provide service.
Emergency 911 Fees
The 911 Emergency Service Fee provides funding for the operation of 911 emergency telecommunications services in your area. Emergency personnel must have the capability to identify the location of a caller when they dial 911. The fee, which is applied per access line, funds communications systems that support emergency and quick response police, fire, and ambulance services with identification of phone number and location. Customers pay for this service and other 911 communication costs through state and county 911 surcharges. Not all counties have the 911 system yet but may collect it for future implementation.
Federal Universal Service Fund and Universal Service Fee
This fee is used to recover contributions we are required to make to the federal Universal Service Fund, which provides support to promote access to telecommunications services at reasonable rates for those living in rural and high-cost areas, income-eligible consumers, rural health care facilities, and schools and libraries. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sets the applicable USF rate on a quarterly basis and is subject to change.
Network Access Charge
Access Charge per FCC Order / CLEC Network Access / Interstate Subscriber Line Charge. This charge, also known as the Federal Subscriber Line Charge (SLC), is an FCC-approved fee that enables local telephone companies to recover a portion of the costs of connecting customers' homes or businesses to the telephone network, so those customers may receive and/or initiate interstate calls.
State and Local Taxes
State sales tax is imposed by your state government. The services that the tax is applied to vary by state. Local tax is imposed by local jurisdictions including cities, counties, special purpose districts, and transit authorities.
Federal Cost Recovery Fee
The Federal Cost Recovery Fee is a new tax that was rolled out by the FCC beginning on 7/1/20.
Below is detailed information:
A new tax type/tax cat 60/28 Federal Telecom Relay Service (FTRS) tax, is applicable to your telecom intrastate transactions, beginning July 1, 2020. It will also be applicable to the same products that FTRS, 60/80 was applicable.
This one fee was essentially split into "federal cost recovery fee" and "federal cost recovery charge".
PIU
We have completed our traffic study for the 2021 period. Our percentage of interstate usage (PIU) of 31.49% will be implemented on 09/01/21 moving forward until our next traffic study.