LET'S REPEAL 'TEMPORARY' TELEPHONE EXCISE TAX

It is a "temporary" tax established in 1898 to finance the Spanish-American War. It produces what is, in the larger scheme of federal budgeteering, a piddling $5 billion annually for the general fund to be spent on any purpose. It is the 3 percent federal excise tax on telephone bills. It should be repealed.

The good news is that more than a century after this tax was instituted, an effort is gaining steam to do just that. Part of this is an election-year Congress searching for accomplishments. Part is the fact that the tax is in reality a tax on the Internet for most users who today access the Net through telephony. For those who are concerned about the "digital divide" -- the gap in Internet access between upper- and lower-income groups -- this tax is part of the problem.

Originally imposed as a luxury tax when there were only 1,376 telephones in the U.S., the tax is now collected on the total bill of 252 million businesss and residential telephone lines, including cellular phones and those hooked up to fax machines and computer modems. People and business with multiple phones pay it several times a month.

With today's marvelous advances, the cost of long-distance telephony is dropping dramatically. Telephones are an increasingly large component of doing business in the information-age economy. Here is a way to further reduce this essential cost at a time that government won't miss the revenues. Congress should get busy with this week's vote and eliminate this 19th-Century tax to free us up to get on with 21st-Century business.