Cook County Telecommunications Tax: A Whole Lot of Wrong Numbers

Every time I open my phone bill I am amazed at the new and innovative taxes and fees applied there by everyone from the federal government to local unincorporated hamlets: federal excise taxes, carrier universal service charge, city utility user fee, state and local taxes, gross receipts tax, and the making phone calls on days that end in “y” duty.

But if I lived in Cook County, IL I would soon miss those heady days of annoying but manageable fees if the Board of Commissioners has anything to do with it. Cook County commissioners recently proposed an astounding telecommunications tax that charges $48 a year to pay for their past mistakes and broken health care system.

Rather than examining county spending habits or utilizing money and time-saving technologies, the county recommends a quick fix that deals a heavy blow to business, seniors, and low-income residents.

Forty-eight dollars a year is a lot, even for just one phone line. For a family with multiple lines, the fees would be astronomical. And we’re not just talking landlines; the proposal includes all cell phones and broadband lines as well. A family of four with just one phone, two cell phones for the parents, and internet could pay $192 for the Cook County telecommunication tax alone. The above scenario is an extremely conservative one – many families have many more lines as increasing numbers of young people have their own cell phones and numerous families require multiple phone lines.

The figures get worse, however. The tax is slated to increase every year with the rate of inflation. That means that after five years, at current inflation rates, that $48 dollar a year tax becomes in excess of a hefty $225! Per line!

If you can imagine what that does to the family with four lines (hint: that’s at least $900/year), just think of what that does to a business. Even a small business typically has at least a main line, direct lines for staff members, internet, and fax lines. The numbers soon become staggering.

It would appear that the Cook County Board of Commissioners wants to put itself out of business. Not only would a business or family be foolish to ever move there (regardless of the other financial hurdles the Chicago area places on innocent citizens), but any other revenues the county depends on will surely dry up as companies and families leave the area for less oppressive pastures.

For seniors and low-income households the new tax would be a particularly hard to absorb. It has long been established that the maintenance of at least one phone in a household is a necessity, not a luxury, yet the commissioners would add a huge tax to what has become a minimum household requirement in the civilized world.

Experts speak of a digital divide that separates the rich and poor, whites and minorities. Now that the rich are the only ones in Cook County that can afford the line, the rich will be the only ones online while others slip further and further behind. Amongst the developed world the United States is already shamefully behind in terms of how many of our citizens lack access to a high-speed internet connection. Bureaucrats like the Cook County Commissioners are doing little to help bring the digital age to their constituents.

Over the past several years, as cell phone use has sky-rocketed in Africa and the rural areas of other developing regions those same areas have experienced amazing economic growth. Villages, where putting in telephone poles was too expensive, are now connected wirelessly so that farmers can learn where the best price for rice is on market day without traveling all the way to the city, so that artisans can sell their goods in stores around the world they might otherwise have never been connected to.

It is clear, even in a third world country, that communication and growth go hand in hand. For the Cook County Board of Commissioners to try to save themselves through taxation on the very lifeblood of their community is foolhardy at best and suicide at worst.