Common Regulatory Fees and Taxes

E911

This fee is assessed against your local service to recover costs for services and equipment that allow customers to dial 911 emergency services.

FCC Subscriber Line Charge

This fee is assessed against your local service to recover the costs of providing long distance access over local phone lines.

Federal Tax

A Federal Tax may encompass several types of tax for a small minority of customers, but for most Norlight customers the Federal Tax that is collected is Federal Excise Tax (FET). FET is charged on Long Distance and Local Telephone charges. The amount charged is used for the United States Treasury General Fund.

Federal USF

This fee is assessed against local and long distance interstate phone service and remitted to the Universal Service Fund administrator to ensure affordable access to telecommunications services for low income customers, schools, libraries and rural health care providers.

Kentucky Communication Services Tax

Beginning January 1, 2006, Kentucky placed a state excise tax of 1.3% on gross revenues from communication services. This tax applies to most communication services, including telephone and internet. This tax is applied monthly to the total amount billed for qualifying services on all Kentucky customers' accounts.

Kentucky Access Fee and Local Access Fee

In Kentucky, any telephone company who buys telephone service for resale must pay sales tax on that service. Through the access fee, we recover the sales tax paid by us to other telephone companies for any signal or access bought by us to be sold to our customers. The regular access fee would apply to Long Distance charges while the Local Access Fee applies to local charges.

Local Number Portability

This fee is assessed against your local service to help recover costs for service and equipment that allow customers to switch their local service provider while keeping their same telephone number.

Local Tax

Local tax is any tax charged by a local government. These taxes may be telecom specific or not depending on the state. Whether there are local taxes on your bill varies from state to state and in some cases from locality to locality. Please note as mentioned above, any local tax collected by a state agency is listed under state taxes on your bill.

Network Management Fee

This charge is collected to offset the fees and network costs associated with the provision of VBX which is a next-generation IP-based information service.

PICC

The Presubscribed Interexchange Carrier Charge (PICC) is a flat-rate per-line fee that long distance companies pay local telephone companies for accessing the local companies’ networks. If a consumer or business hasn't chosen a long distance carrier, the local telephone company may bill the consumer or business for the PICC.

Property Tax Recovery Charge

This charge is collected to offset the costs incurred from the taxing of property used in the transmission of voice and data services for customers.

Regulatory Compliance Charge (RCC)

This charge is assessed to offset the costs incurred to remain in compliance with state and federal regulations.

Service and Handling Charge

This charge is assessed to accounts receiving a paper bill. Pay online and save by using our Online Account Management (OAM) electronic payment system. Visit our OAM website at www.norlight.com/oam to sign up today!

State PUC Surcharge

These are fees assessed on regulated intrastate telecommunications services to offset operating costs of the state public utility/service commissions.

State Tax

In all states the sale of telecommunications services is subject to some sort of state tax. The majority of items that encompass state taxes are listed below.

• Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky charge sales tax on eligible telecommunications sales. The concept and basis of this tax is similar to the ordinary normal sales tax charged on goods and services in the various states mentioned. Please note that Tennessee also collects local sales tax on behalf of its localities. This tax is also stated as a state tax since it is collected by a state agency.

State USF

In some states, the state has a Universal Service Fund separate from the Federal Universal Service Fund. This fund serves as a supplement to the federal fund and primarily insures that low income individuals can have access to reasonably priced phone service.

Telecommunications Relay Surcharge

This fee assessed against your local line to recover costs for providing telephone service to consumers with speech and hearing impairments.