HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.gao/gaobadoau0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
Comptroller General
ot the United States14k1:;7
Decision
Matter of: 9-1-1 Emergency Telephone Service Fee--
Commonwealth of Kentucky
]ile: B-246517
Date: April 17, 1992
DIGEST
The federal government is constitutionally immune from
paying the 9-1-1 emergency telephone service fee imposed by
the Commonwealth of Kentucky'because the fee is a tax, the
legal burden of which falls directly on the federal
government as a telephone service consumer,
DECISION
An authorized certifying officer of the Department of
Agriculture National Finance Center has requested an advance
decision-under 31 US.C. § 3529 on the ptopriety of paying a
9-1-A.emergency telephone service,fee assessed ajainst
federal agencies by Wolfe County, Commonwealth of Kentucky.
For reasons set forth below, we conclude that the fee is a,
tax, the legal burden of which falls directly on the federal
government as the telephone service consumer, and that the
government therefore is constitutionally inmune from paying
it.
The Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS) authorizes local
governments to establish 9-1-1 emergency telephone-seivice
and to pay for the establishment and operation of the
service by levying and collecting fees from local telephone
exchange subscribers on an individual exchange line basis.
KRS § 65.760(1) (3).
Wolfe CountyFiscal Court, the governing body of Wolfe
County, passed'an ordinance which levies a 9-1- fee for
each exchange telephone subscriber payable on an individual
exchange line basis. The ordinance authdrizes Mountain
Rural Telephone, the phone company providing local'phone
service in Wolfe County, to collect the 9-1-1 fee from
telephone subscribers and to remit the fee to the Wolfe
County government.
The United States and its instrumentalities are
constitutionally immune from direct taxation. McCullochv.
Mar -,,17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316 (1819). Direct taxation
occurs where the legal incidence of the ta)-,falls directly
on the United States as the buyer of goods, Kern-Limerick,](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.gao/gaobadoau0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)