The U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., joined 2 other circuits in ruling F...

to decide whether a statute imposing a tax on calls that vary by distance and time applies to long distance calls that vary in time but not distance. The U.S. Dist. Court, D.C., concluded the statute doesn’t cover such charges “and we agree,” Tatel said. “Many customers now pay per-minute charges that remain constant regardless of how far their calls travel,” which doesn’t meet the Internal Revenue Code’s time-and-distance definition, said Tatel. The case, brought by the National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak), reflects how billing for phone service has changed since 1965, when Congress last amended the phone tax provisions, the court said. However, despite those changes, the court said it doesn’t agree with the IRS that “the tax extends to all future service, however billed.” Tatel wrote: “Because the district’s court’s well-reasoned opinion properly ascertains the statute’s meaning, we affirm the grant of summary judgment to Amtrak. True, this interpretation limits the effectiveness of the tax on long-distance calls, but because [the statute] is unambiguous, the IRS must take its case to Congress, not this court.” USTelecom said this “is the third major strike against the IRS’s misguided insistence on collecting the federal excise tax. It’s time for the IRS to admit defeat and stop enforcing the illegal application of this tax.”