[tptacek]

It is listed in bills. The objection NCTA has is the FCC's requirement that the fees be catalogued to consumers at the point of sale, before a bill has been incurred. I don't blame them for objecting to this. These aren't Comcast's fees; they're municipal taxes.

[nulbyte]

> I don't blame them for objecting to this. These aren't Comcast's fees; they're municipal taxes.

I do. If they are obligated to collect it, they ought to be obligated to inform the customer at the time of purchase. It's unreasonable to expect customers to agree to vague terms that leave them not knowing how much they are going to pay.

If I go shopping online, I know how much I'm going to pay in shipping and sales tax before I agree to the charge. This doesn't seem that different to me. The ISP knows how much they are going to charge. They just don't want to tell their customers until it's too late. I'll blame 'em for it all day long, it's their fault they don't want to tell me up front, not my government's.

[kerkeslager]

I'd actually go further and say that taxes should always be included in prices, even before checkout.

A common anti-poor talking point is that poor people don't make and stick to budgets, but corporate refusal to include tax in prices means that you can't reasonably tell how a given purchase will affect your budget beforehand. A simple trip to the grocery store means that you have to know what taxes apply to every item in your cart before you go to checkout to be able to know how much you're spending. That's not reasonable for the average consumer. If you really think it is, go ahead and try calculating your total of 20+ different grocery store items before you check out--you'll fail.

[hnbad]

How can you consent to a contract if you don't know what the contract actually entails? I realize a lot of places in the US don't even spell out sales tax on items before they're rung up at the cashier but this level of intransparency seems like it contradicts the entire premise of legal contract theory.

If an ISP collects these fees and taxes, it's their obligation to inform the customer about them and to include them in price listings, at least in addition to the raw price. For example in Germany b2b price listings will often exclude VAT (which means VAT will still be shown but not included in the listed item price) but for b2c prices will always match exactly what you pay. The only example I've ever seen of a "surprise tax" in my entire life both in private and professionally is artists' social security insurance contributions, which are owed by any business or organisation paying a contractor or employee defined as an "artist or editor" (which includes most creative and media work): the fee is not collected by the person you pay but has to be paid to the social security organization directly and it's something you're simply expected to know if you run a business or organization.