Have You Noticed Your Privilege Tax Today?

Implications: The early signs of economic recession/whatever you want to call it, show up in the telco/wireless bill paying numbers, among other key indicators.  The municipal entities have been gleaning revenue from sales taxes and business franchise fees, but some are now going after something called the "privilege tax".

Analysis: The article referred to in this commentary talks about a tax that perhaps, many of us (including me) have just not seen on our bills, but it may be there, if we start looking at our bills more closely.  It is very easy to pay the bills in rote fashion, just trudging out the checks or doing the online bill payment thing such as Checkfree, but not really seeing what we are paying for.  The "privilege tax" mentioned in the referenced article caught my eye, where Qwest is pushing back by suing the North Plains City Council in Washington County, Oregon, because the tax "does not also apply to wireless carriers and the internet," quoting the Qwest spokesman.  This new tax is apparently replacing the 7% franchise fee in North Plains, with a 5% tax that is assessed on "all public utitlities with rights of way in North Plains". 
With more and more of us opting to use the wireless line as our main communication for the residence, we give up our wireline access line that has been the mainstay index marker of the telcos for many years.   Access line gain has been used for doling out capital and expense in the "proper ratios" to those managing the telephone business by their bosses, and used by investors in determining all sorts of neat indices for how these companies manage their capex.
This foray of North Plains is apparently one of many privilege taxes currently being applied to service providers, including direct broadcast satellite, as it is in TN today.  I would invite you to google "privilege tax" and see for yourself how this tax is going over with the bloggers, and service providers such as Qwest, among many others.  Of course, DirecTV does not have any landlines in use right now (except for the newly announced video-on-demand service that uses an internet connection to the digital video recorder/receiver).  So, it would seem that there is some validity to privilege tax (and other tax) lawsuits that do not tax all the service providers using rights-of-way.  Of course, all cell tower backhaul traffic is handled by landline to a central point, usually a telephone central office, as an example.