Calif. to Tax Interconnected VoIP, Which the FCC Could Have Prevented: Lawyer
VoIP providers in California have been getting State Board of Equalization notices about having to file annual property tax statements starting next year, which is what the cloud communications industry had hoped the FCC would prevent, telecom lawyer Jonathan Marashlian of Marashlian & Donahue wrote Friday. The tax development springs from the California Public Utilities Commission's 2024 decision reclassifying interconnected VoIP providers as “telephone corporations," he said. "Once the CPUC decided to regulate VoIP like legacy telephony, other state agencies quickly followed suit—and found new ways to tax VoIP providers," he said.
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Marashlian criticized the FCC for not acting on the Cloud Communications Alliance and the Cloud Voice Alliance's 11-month-old petition seeking preemption of California's interconnected VoIP regulatory framework (see 2501280047). The petition "has now languished at the FCC for nearly a year with no visible procedural movement, even as California agencies push forward with expanded regulation and taxation of VoIP providers," he said.