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by creeble 406 days ago
It depends. I argued on the phone with Verizon for a long time (over an hour, going up and up the chain) about why a certain “Recovery Fee” was not in their per-line costs.

The answer (eventually) was that they do indeed pay the fee to government, but it varies with usage in a complex, government-defined formula in a bill from the 90s.
1 comments
Someone1234 406 days ago
It doesn't matter what a Verizon customer service representative said. Recovery Fees are not a tax and are not paid to the government. There is no justifiable reasons why they're broken out into a separate line item except to hide the total cost of service.

By that logic, why stop there? Why not have Gas Taxes, Vehicle Registration Fees, Payroll Taxes, Corporate Property Taxes, or Permitting Fees as separate line items in the cellular bill? Which may sound absurd, but that's identical logic to most of the existing non-tax fees.

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creeble 405 days ago
Some of these fees are, indeed, paid to the government. That does not mean they are a tax, in the same sense that (as mentioned elsewhere) a building permit is not a tax, but is still required by, and paid to, the government.

I'm not trying to excuse Verizon for not including them in their overall pricing, but these two in particular:

- Fed Universal Service Charge

- Regulatory Charge

are both paid to the government, and variable based on usage.

Edit: I will also note that Verizon has a $3.50 per-line fixed line item called "Admin & Telco Recovery Charge" that is utter BS.

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Someone1234 405 days ago
> Some of these fees are, indeed, paid to the government. That does not mean they are a tax

It actually means exactly that. A building permit is also a tax. If it is paid to the government (any government of any level) by force of law it is a tax; calling taxes "fees" doesn't make them any more not taxes.

If they said all "taxes and other government fees" that would be better, I suppose. But they don't say that, and their current fees aren't all government originating, ultimately making this price lock completely meaningless.

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