Cell Phone Taxes

The Tax Foundation's blog has a table of federal and state cell phone tax rates. The federal government levies a 6.05 percent tax on wireless telecommunications.

The federal government controls spectrum, and collects lots of money from spectrum auctions. Indeed, the government must charge market price for spectrum in order to maximize efficiency. Yet communications has a positive network effect on the economy, so the government should want them to be as inexpensive as possible. So the government should not be charging any additional taxes on cellular users. That 6% tax should be eliminated.