TOPEKA — The House has given final approval to continuing a tax on telephone services to fund 911 emergency systems that can locate mobile phones.
House Bill 2582 sparked some bad feelings between the House and Senate in part because senate negotiators wanted to change the way the tax is collected on prepaid mobile services.
At present, providers estimate the amount of tax owed for the prepaid services.
Under the Senate’s proposal, the tax would be paid at the point of sale, like a sales tax.
On Tuesday, Sen. Terry Bruce said the estimation in the current law leads to substantial undercollection of taxes. Changing to a more precise point-of-sale system would nearly triple income from the tax to about $1.2 million a year, he said.
He said the income is critical for small counties that can’t afford the high-tech gear needed to allow emergency responders to find accident victims by their cell-phone signal.
At one point, Bruce compared House confreres to 2-year-olds who couldn’t get along in day care. He later retracted the remark and apologized, and the Senate passed the bill 40-0.
The House passed it today on a 121-2 vote, which will send it to the governor for signature or veto.
If no action had been taken, the tax would have sunseted later this year.