Local taxes on my cell phone bill

IL (even out of Chicago Metro) is usually a mid-higher taxed state (not as high as CA, but still...), so I think pretty much every county has their bit of the telephone tax pie, so it wouldn't be just illegal or immoral, but difficult at best...

Ya, and you notify your state at the end of the year that you bought something online and didn't pay the tax on it, and then you mail in the tax with your state 1040 tax form at the end of the year.

timx said:   Just did my own investigation. The taxes are based on your billing address. Here are the tax rates. Switching from Illinois to Nevada would save me over $100 a year.

http://www.mywireless.org/state-issues/state-tax-rankings/Your calling plan probably has free roaming, but wouldn't their fraud detector light up when 99-100 percent of your calls are from another state?

Figure if you switch to e-billing, your friend in another state doesn't even have to get your physical bill.

timx said:   Just did my own investigation. The taxes are based on your billing address. Here are the tax rates. Switching from Illinois to Nevada would save me over $100 a year.

http://www.mywireless.org/state-issues/state-tax-rankings/
Your investigation is flawed. Since 2008 cell phone taxes on post-paid plans have been based on the area code of service you select when you activate or transfer a number to your cell phone and not the billing zip code for your plan. Unless you want to have an out-of-state area code, switching to a Nevada billing address is not going to save you a cent on Illinois local taxes and usage tarrifs if you still maintain a cell phone number with an Illinois area code. Right now the only way to avoid these "taxes" is to use a prepaid cell phone plan. However even using a prepaid phone is only a temporary solution as the FCC has already mandated that by 2016 each state where you use your cell phone during a billing or prepaid plan period will get their piece of the tax pie from your cell phone usage reagrdless of the type of prepaid/post-paid plan you use. For prepaid plans that means the end of the true flat rate unlimited cell phone service as starting in 2016 in addition to having a flat rate unlimited or per minute rate plan you will need to keep a positive rolling balance to compensate the tax man as well as the other usual federal govenment tariffs like safelink that post-paid cell phone plan and landline users already pay right now.

back when i sold cell service, if more than a certain % of your use was outside of your billing area they would cut you off, that has been a few years , howardforums may have something on the topic

alamo11 said:   Quick question - I live in FL which has one of the highest cell taxes at over 20%, if I use my friends billing address in michigan, will verizon mind/care?