Sam Brownback: “I am delighted to hail today the passage of the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act. This legislation is the product…”

“I am delighted to hail today the passage of the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act. This legislation is the product of more than three year's worth of negotiations between the governors, cities, State tax and local tax authorities, and the wireless industry. The legislation represents an historic agreement between State and local governments and the wireless industry to bring sanity to the manner in which wireless telecommunications services are taxed. For as long as we have had wireless telecommunications in this country, we have had a taxation system that is incredibly complex for carriers and costly for consumers. Today, there are several different methodologies that determine whether a taxing jurisdiction may tax a wireless call. If a call originates at a cell site located in a jurisdiction, it may impose a tax. If a call originates at a switch in the jurisdiction, a tax may be imposed. If the billing address is in the jurisdiction, a tax can be imposed. As a result, many different taxing authorities can tax the same wireless call. The farther you travel during a call, the greater the number of taxes that can be imposed upon it. This system is simply not sustainable as wireless calls represent an increasingly portion of the total number of calls made throughout the United States. To reduce the cost of making wireless calls, Senator Dorgan and I introduced S. 1755, the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act.”