Your monthly bill will contain a variety of different charges related to your service, which can fluctuate or change due to a variety of different factors, including the following:

• Promotion credits starting or ending
  
• Unpaid bill charges
• Pending adjustments
• Pending orders
• Usage charges such as toll or long distance including international calls, pay per view or on demand
• Tax charges that vary slightly depending on the number of days in the month

 

Your bill may include some federal, state and local taxes, government surcharges and fees, and Verizon surcharges. These charges vary depending on what products and services you have and in what state you use these products/services.

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Additional state taxes
Each state has the power to levy additional state taxes based upon Public Utility Commission (PUC) guidance. If you have a question about a charge on your bill that appears to be state initiated, contact your state PUC for explanation of the charge and why it was instituted. In many cases, these charges are similar to those levied at the interstate level.

Carrier Cost Recovery Charge
The Carrier Cost Recovery Charge is a monthly surcharge telecommunications carriers, such as Verizon Long Distance and Verizon Enterprise Solutions, are permitted to assess in order to defray a portion of the costs to terminate calls on other networks; fees paid to support government programs such as Telecommunications Relay Service and Local Number Portability, along with other charges assessed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); and additional indirect costs associated with administering and complying with government programs. This surcharge is not a customer tax or fee assessed by a government agency.

City tax
A tax collected for city governments from purchasers of products and users of telecommunication services, which may include equipment, installation, maintenance, and local and long distance service.

Emergency Service Fee for 911
The 911 Emergency Service Fee covers the costs of local jurisdictions providing 911 emergency response services to its citizens. The fee is generally either an amount per telephone access line or a percentage of revenue. State law mandates the fee. Verizon collects this fee as a billing agent on behalf of the appropriate 911 jurisdictions within the state. A few states authorized Verizon to collect the fees as a cost recovery where the state designates Verizon as the provider of the 911 emergency phone service.

Federal excise tax
The federal excise tax is a tax on local telephone service for services and facilities sold in connection with local service. This tax is a percentage of the cost of your services and appears on the local phone portion of your bill. The percentage used to calculate the amount of the tax appears with the charge. For example, "Federal excise tax at 3%."

Verizon acts as a billing agent and collects these fees on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). All monies collected for the federal excise tax are paid directly to the IRS.

Interstate access charge
The FCC has mandated an access charge, known as the FCC Line Charge, to partially reimburse telephone service providers for the cost of routing long distance calls made by local customers. This charge is applied to all customers who have telephone lines in their home or business, whether they make long distance calls or not. This is also known as the Federal Subscriber Line Charge and the Federal Line Cost Charge.

Intrastate access charge
A state-assessed surcharge to partially reimburse telephone service providers for the cost of routing long distance calls made by local customers. This charge is applied to all customers who have telephone lines in their home or business, whether they make long distance charges or not.

Federal Universal Service Fund (USF) charge
A monthly, per-line surcharge paid by the customer to recover local companies' contribution to the Federal Universal Service Fund (FUSF). This fund supports telecommunications and information services in schools, public libraries and rural healthcare facilities. The fund also subsidizes local service to high-cost areas and low-income customers. The FCC regulates this charge.

The FUSF rate is reviewed quarterly. This fee helps keep local telephone rates affordable for all customers and gives a discount to schools, libraries and low-income families.

Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)
Generated funds are reserved for mass-transit systems.

Municipal franchise fee
A fee assessed for the privilege of using the municipal public rights-of-way. This fee provides the municipality the funds needed to recover the cost of administering the access to the right-of-way. Typical costs included are for inspection, permit processing, engineering, traffic and other such expenditures that the municipality incurs to manage the health and safety of its citizens, as utility companies work in the right-of-way. The fee is generally either an amount per telephone access line or a percentage of revenue. State law or Public Utility Commission tariffs allow Verizon to recover these costs as a separately billed item.

Municipal infrastructure maintenance fee
Municipalities collect this fee from public utilities.

Service provider number portability
Federal law requires all local phone companies to provide "service provider number portability," which allows customers to retain their phone number when switching companies to provide their local phone service. Federal law allows for the recovery of costs associated with the development, implementation and operability of service provider number portability. The FCC and state Public Utility Commissions approved the amounts that the local phone companies can charge, on a fee-per-access-line basis, to recover these costs by charging PBX and ISDN PRI customers nine and five times the basic per-line fee, respectively.

State infrastructure maintenance fee
Similar to the municipal Maintenance fee, this allows public utilities to recover these fees from their customers.

State sales tax
A state tax levied on all long distance calls and some services and features.

State transaction privilege tax
Generally, this is similar to a sales tax.

State utility gross receipts tax
Telephone companies must pay tax on total revenue. This funds the Public Utility Commissions and other state services. This tax is usually a liability of the company (levied on the company's receipts). Generally, Verizon must pay this tax without regard to whether or not it is recovered from Verizon customers.

State universal service fees
Some states assess state universal service fees for providing universal service for schools, libraries and rural healthcare facilities. This fee is calculated as a percentage of your total monthly long distance charges.

Telecommunication relay service/hearing impaired/telecommunications device for the deaf
This fee provides special-needs equipment, facilities and services for people who are deaf to use the telecommunications network. This includes special phones, hearing devices, Braille pads, necessary network switching equipment and operation of a service center that the customer uses for specialized services. The requirements for collecting and remittance of the fees are state specific and established by state law, Public Utility Commission rule or tariff filings.

Telecomm service excise tax
Treated as a sales tax. The difference inferred in the name relates to the incidence of the tax — whether the tax is the liability of the customer or of the company. If the tax is the liability of the company, regulatory authorities usually allow Verizon to recover it from customers, either as a separate line on the bill or just buried in Verizon's cost of service.

Universal service fees
Universal service fees are mandated by the federal government and assessed under rules developed by the FCC to support universal service for schools, libraries and rural healthcare facilities. It is calculated as a percentage of your total monthly long distance charges.

Additional fees for Fios TV subscribers

Your Verizon Fios TV charges will appear in a section of your bill designated specifically for Fios TV and may include some additional fees related to your service.

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Broadcast fee
This monthly fee helps cover a portion of the costs currently charged by local programming providers to Verizon for basic-tier programming channels and is subject to change.

Video franchise fee
This monthly fee allows Verizon to recover from its customers the cost of the video franchise fee Verizon is required to pay to local franchise authorities, which may be up to 5.26% of the gross revenues from Fios TV services, in order to provide TV services.

Video regulatory fee
This fee recovers the amount Verizon pays to fund the administrative costs of one or more regulatory bodies; whether that is the FCC that is funded on a per-subscriber-fee basis or a state regulator that may be funded on a per-subscriber or percentage of cable television revenue basis.

Billing glossary of terms

For a complete listing of all billing terminology, please visit our Billing glossary page.