"Emergency" Taxes
If you ever hear your local parasite-politicians babble about a "temporary" or "emergency" tax this is what they really mean, lets put this tax on for a hundred years or more. Worse this was a "luxury tax on the rich" that turned into a burdensome tax on everyone.
Washington -- The Treasury Department, conceding that it has no right to continue collecting a 108-year-old tax on long-distance telephone calls, announced Thursday that it will drop its legal fight for the tax and instead refund as much as $13 billion to callers who have paid the tax in the past three years.
The 3 percent tax, enacted in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War and revised in 1965, has been declared illegal by five federal courts of appeal during the past year as the result of challenges brought by companies forced to pay it.
Treasury Secretary John Snow Thursday called it "an outdated, antiquated tax that has survived a century beyond its original purpose and by now should have been ancient history."