California is looking into unnecessary ways to take even MORE money from the pockets of taxpayers.
This time, state regulators want to start charging a fee for text messaging on mobile phones to "help support programs that make phone service accessible to the poor."
The proposal, which is now scheduled for a vote next month by the California Public Utilities Commission, is not backed by the wireless industry who have been working to defeat it.
“It’s a dumb idea,” Jim Wunderman, president of the Bay Area Council business-sponsored advocacy group told Mercury News. “This is how conversations take place in this day and age, and it’s almost like saying there should be a tax on the conversations we have.”
The fee would most likely be billed as a flat surcharge per customer and not a fee per text.
Business groups opposing the idea calculated the new charges for wireless consumers could total about $44.5 million a year if the tax passes.
Wunderman said, and many would agree, that there is really no other local, state or federal program that taxes texting.
The wireless industry including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others, have even argued the state commission lacks legal grounds for implementing such a fee.
Read more at the Mercury News.
Photo: Getty Images
OMG! California Considering 'Text' Tax
Texting your friends might get a little more expensive in California if state regulators get their way.
By RJ Johnson - @rickerthewriter