Language in Small Business Jobs Bill Nixes Cell Phone Tax
WASHINGTON, September 16, 2010 – Legislation sponsored by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, to end a regulation on cell phones passed a cloture vote in the Senate as part of H.R. 5297, the Small Business Jobs Act.
WASHINGTON, September 16, 2010 – Legislation sponsored by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to end a tax on cell phones passed a cloture vote in the Senate as part of H.R. 5297, the Small Business Jobs Act.
“You can’t do business in the modern economy without a cell phone so it’s crazy to tax them like some executive perk,” said Kerry, a senior member of the Finance Committee and former chairman of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. “This law was long in need of modernization, and I’m glad we’ve done right by businesses and abolished this silly and outdated law.”
Kerry, along with Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced the Modernize Our Bookkeeping In the Law for Employee’s Cell Phone Act, better known as the MOBILE Cell Phone Act, in 2008 to end the widely ignored treatment of cell phones and similar devices as an executive fringe perk by the Internal Revenue Service. The law currently requires employers to keep constant, detailed written logs of every phone call, text, and e-mail employees send or make, according to Kerry’s office.
