Filed under: VoIP
"Adios" to Spanish-American War Phone Tax
Believe it or not, if you're an American, you've been paying a 3% excise tax on all of your long distance calls to finance the Spanish-American war (yup--the same war that ended years before Theodore Veil founded the first long-distance networking firm, AT&T). This week, that tax has been officially repealed, hinting that the old war has finally been paid for, some 108 years later. Or, perhaps more importantly, that your long-distance carrier no longer has the burden of shuffling 3% of their revenue over to Uncle Sam. Me? I've been a VoIP user for almost four years now, allowing me to circumvent the excise penalty. I'm not sure how much I saved, though. Of course, with VoIP services becoming so popular, the long-term feasibility of this tax was in question anyway. Long distance calling is a dying business, after all. It's only a matter of time before regulators go after VoIP for tax revenue. Oh wait--they already have...
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Richard said 5:29PM on 8-01-2006
How many years will it take to pay off the current war?
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Ted Wallingford said 6:14PM on 8-01-2006
... saw that comment coming about 250 miles away ...
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