A new report from the Committee on State Taxation (COST) shows that telecommunications taxes across the nation are burdensome and complex. For example, COST found that:

a higher nationwide average effective rate of transactional taxes applies to sales of telecommunications services-18%-than to sales of goods by general businesses-6%;

telecommunications providers face more administrative filing requirements-55,748 filings required annually across the nation-compared to sellers of other goods-7,237 filings across the nation;

"any provider that intends to sell the full array of telecommunications services throughout the United States" would be required "to maintain different tax matrices for each of the 310 separate state and local taxes that are applied to 687 different tax bases."
In today's increasingly high-tech, information-based economy, these added tax burdens and complexities on telecommunications providers make no sense whatsoever and only serve to raise prices and limit choices for telecommunications consumers. Small, entrepreneurial businesses are impacted as both consumers and providers of services in the world of telecommunications.
Federal, state and local governments should be working frantically to lift governmental burdens from telecommunications, in order to fully unleash innovation and invention.