Young Adults To Be Hurt By Federal USF Phone Tax Changes
If you are over the age of 45, you have a home phone and possibly a cell phone. But if you are under the age of 25, you may very well have four, five or even more connections: a home phone, one or more cell phones, an IM or Blackberry-style device, a broadband data connection and maybe even a separate line for online video gaming and/or a digital video recorder (DVR). That is why the Keep Universal Service Fund (USF) Fair Coalition is warning today that younger adults are among those who would fare the worst under a controversial plan now under discussion in Washington, D.C., to shift the Universal Service Fund tax on phone bills.
Under the proposed change, the USF tax would shift from the current percentage of actual long-distance calls to a flat, monthly tax of $1-$2 on all connections including non-voice data lines regardless of whether the connections are used for any long-distance calls. To show the potential cost to young adults of changing the USF funding formula, the Keep USF Fair Coalition is launching http://www.phonetaxcalculator.com, which allows young adults to estimate their current USF tax burden and how much it would go up under the widely criticized per-connection approach.
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