Federal telephone excise tax

The federal telephone excise tax is a statutory federal excise tax imposed under the Internal Revenue Code in the United States under 26 U.S.C. § 4251 on amounts paid for certain "communications services". The tax was to be imposed on the person paying for the communications services (such as a customer of a telephone company) but, under 26 U.S.C. § 4291, is collected from the customer by the "person receiving any payment for facilities or services" on which the tax is imposed (i.e., is collected by the telephone company, which files a quarterly Form 720 excise return and forwards the tax to the Internal Revenue Service).