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Comment by oogali | Hacker News Reader

Not necessarily defending them, but taxes vary depending on state, county, city, and/or taxing district, against a matrix of what type of service is being sold and what revenue limits, if any.

Then add another level as you're not being sold service by Spectrum but Spectrum of New York, and variable tax/fee contributions depend on total revenue of that subsidiary (e.g. Universal Service Fund[1]).

It can be fairly complicated in a static state, but then add in new/pending legislature and it's something that needs to be updated monthly.

Yes, they already do that work internally (and if they get it wrong, the government taxing entities tell them they are miscalculating the amount and assesses penalties and fees) but publishing it adds a new dimension.

1: https://sourceadvisors.com/blogs/salt/what-is-the-federal-un....

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If they can bill me, they can tell me how much it'll cost. They know my address.

At the point where I'm querying about internet service, they need to know my address to ascertain that they can in fact have(/can run) a cable into my house. And when they know my address, they know all of the relevant jurisdictions imposing taxes on that and the relevant tax rates.

The two things that are going to be difficult are if you want to promote, say, a nationwide "$60/month plan", or if you've got some corporate tax that's hard to calculate on a marginal basis that you're trying to pass onto consumers. Neither of those things are motivating to me. If it's too hard to compute the accurate tax fee per person, just roll that into your base plan calculation and budget accordingly. We don't expect to have to pay a corporation's corporate tax as a separate line item on the bill, so why should we expect that consumers have to pay an industry-specific corporate tax as a separate line item?

At the end of the day, the reality is that this is an industry that is trying to advertise plans that are at wildly different rates from those the consumer has to pay, and they're upset that some truth-in-advertising laws is starting to be enforced. It's not even outlawing the wildly different rates; it's merely requiring transparency in the differences!

They only need to publish the taxes and fees if they’re not part of the advertised service price. The FCC has made it very clear that if ISP don’t want to publish the minutiae of all the various taxes and fees, then those ISP are welcome to charge a single flat, advertised, price, and not inflate bills beyond that price with spurious taxes and “fees”.

Of course that would require ISPs to be honest and upfront with their advertising and billing practices, something US ISP seem to be incapable of.

If it is genuinely too complex ISPs could always take the approach of making the advertised price tax/fee-inclusive, like T-Mobile did.

Every other business can list taxes and fees, no reason ISPs can't.

And you can't tell me that metro net's mandatory "technology fee" of $10 to every customer can't be disclosed before you get to a buy page

> taxes vary depending on state, county, city, and/or taxing district, against a matrix of what type of service is being sold and what revenue limits, if any.

Ow well, if yhey cant figure out all these complexities, how do they know they are charging me the rifht amount?

US is really a wild place, if I demanded a random, unexplainable and higher than expected amount of money from my customers, I would be accused of fraud and no court would uphold my demands

How do they know what to charge you? There is some billing system that has all the taxes and fees in it to apply to your bill and there are 3rd parties SaaS companies that solve taxes for business like Avalara that will give a break down of all the taxes it applied to a given address.

They provide you with a form to check if your address is supported which is linked to one system that do the check. I think it is possible to link the two systems together to give you the price for your particular address. I don't think taxes and fees here has to do with anything other than your physical address (They are not the IRS after all)

If they can show me the price at checkout then why cannot show the price in listing.

Because they need additional information like your address which is not available to them in the listing.

Exactly. It's not a valid excuse for the ISP, but it is a legitimate beef. The ridiculous array of taxes really are a giant PITA for them and for consumers.

US ISPs don't have computers and databases? :)

Sure they do, but even with a computer and a database, keeping track of exactly which taxes apply and which don't to who, from 3,143 counties and 19,495 cities isn't a trivial thing to do.

Again it's not a defense of the big companies, but it is a legitimate beef.

They manage to get it right on my bill, so it's not like they don't have the information handy, they just don't want to disclose it until as late as legally possible.

not trying to unload on you because it's many different people, but Ok, I give up trying to say "it's not a defense of the ISPs" because clearly people aren't capable of separating threads of thought. I guess the limbic system response to "evil ISP" is just too overpowering for the frontal lobe and logic falls by the wayside.

It's simply not possible that two different things can both be true? That ISPs already have to do it so should disclose what they're charging, but that also the number of taxes and fees are ridiculous? Why is that so hard to separate in people's minds?

If a Comcast president said that ham sandwiches are better when they're grilled, and I said "he's got a good point there" would that also be misconstrued as a defense of their billing practices?

Taxes and fees are complicated, no question.

But it's completely ridiculous for ISPs (or anybody else) to use that as a justification for dark patterns during the sales cycle.

Now, if the taxes and fees were so complicated, the company simply couldn't comply at all, at any point in the customer lifecycle, then sure, that's a good excuse. But that's not the case - ISPs manage to figure this stuff out eventually.

> but that also the number of taxes and fees are ridiculous?

You know ISPs go out of their way to artificially inflate the number of taxes and fees they charge you, right?

If every company took the approach ISPs took, then every recipe in the U.S. would be the length of a CVS receipt, listing out every minor and incidental tax and fee the company happened to pay as part of its operating procedures. You don’t see stores passing on “electricity fees”, and “union negotiations taxes” etc etc, because only ISPs take affront at the idea that they should pay for their business expenses, rather that passing them on a additional itemised billing items to their customers.

Calling it a “legitimate beef” crosses the line from considering a thread of thought into defending the ISP because it’s only true from their perspective.

> It's simply not possible that two different things can both be true? That ISPs already have to do it so should disclose what they're charging, but that also the number of taxes and fees are ridiculous? Why is that so hard to separate in people's minds?

As several other people told you, because they can get it right on the bill but not on the contract and advertising. If they can do the first, they can do the other two but they don't want to.

> keeping track of exactly which taxes apply and which don't to who, from 3,143 counties and 19,495 cities isn't a trivial thing to do.

I don't see this isn't a legitimate beef. If you can't comply with local regulations because you serve too many municipalities it sounds like you aren't a good fit to serve those customers. Perhaps the solution is to sell your infrastructure off to smaller, local companies who can comply. Or heck even just other equally big companies who are well run enough to manage such a problem.

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