Phone Taxes Revisited.

Halelujah! The Spanish have been defeated! Y'know, the Spanish-American War? Remember the Maine? That's how we got Gitmo, and took over the Philipines. And Teddy Roosevelt got to charge up San Juan Hill, while his two lovely aunts poisoned their houseguests? Wait, that's Arsenic and Old Lace. Anyway, it was a war in 1898. To pay for it, the federal government instituted a 3% excise tax on all telephone lines.

In May, recognizing that we can now safely declare the Spanish Menace no longer a threat, Congress repealed the Federal Excise Tax. So one of those little nickel-and-dime line-items has finally gone the way of, well, not too many taxes.