Excise Taxes

An Excise tax is a Federal or state tax imposed on the manufacture and distribution of certain non-essential consumer goods.

The federal telephone excise tax is a statutory Federal Excise Tax imposed under the Internal Revenue Code in the United States on amounts paid for certain "communications services," commonly intrastate, interstate and international telephone services. The tax was to be imposed on the person paying for the communications services (such as a customer of a telephone company) but, is collected from the customer by the "person receiving any payment for facilities or services" on which the tax is imposed (i.e., is collected by the telephone company, which files a quarterly Form 720 excise return and forwards the tax to the Internal Revenue Service).