Excessive Taxes and Fees on my Cable/Phone Bill

I get my cable, internet and phone service through a bundled package via Cox communications, and one thing that has really bugged me is the high level of fees & taxes in each bill. I have scanned in one of my recent bills so that you can see what I mean. My total bill was $125.38; Figure 1, has a total of the bills fees and charges summary which comes to $8.20 (6.5% of the total). I can live with that. Then, I see these other taxes, which are NOT in the fees and charges summary section. Figure 2, shows these as FCC Access charge and VA Telephone right of way fee. These add up to $6.89.

Figure 1- Fees and Taxes Summary

Figure 2 – Phone Tax/Charges

So combining all the actual charges, the total fees and taxes I pay on the bill is 15.09, or 12% of the total bill. The sales tax in my state (VA) is 5%, so this is almost 7% more than than that. You can look up each of the taxes via a Google search and I hope that all these tax dollars are being effectively spent by the government. Though I highly doubt it, but as this is not a political blog, I won’t go into it further.

If I wanted to save money and reduce taxes, one thing I could do is to get rid of my land line – which seems to have the highest taxes levied against it. I can see why a number of people are doing this, but unfortunately due my condos intercom system, I need to have a land line available. Further the communications company in my area has a virtual monopoly so not many lower priced options out there. For now, I guess I’ll have to live with it.

Are your cable/phone taxes and charges as high in the state you live in?

Get what you are entitled to

One more item related to your cable or phone service, based on my experience, is to make sure you get the services you are paying for. I had signed up for a High Definition (HD) cable service when I bought my HD TV (Christmas gift splurge!), but it was only 2 months later I realized that Cox was providing its HD TV customers with free HD Channels! I only found out about this when a friend told me about this special offer. When I called the COX customer representative, they said their customer accounts service department had “forgotten” to turn on this service. Off course, since it was free, I could get no credit! Got the channels now and you can definitely see the picture quality difference in high definition channels. Make sure you don’t miss out on this if you have a HD TV. Also recheck what services you are paying for and that you getting what you are entitled to.