T-Mobile is making a big change to how it handles taxes for account upgrades and add-ons, as they have announced they will begin charging taxes on these features soon.
The news comes, as usual, via an internal document shared with The T-Mo Report, embedded below. It shows that some account and line add-ons will be taxed separately on all plans, even plans with taxes included.
The document mentions some examples of add-ons that will incur taxes. These include Stateside International Talk & Text, Global Plus, Scam Shield Premium, and more.
The new tax charges also include a tax on additional upgrades to Netflix. For example, if you have a plan where T-Mobile pays for a standard-rate Netflix plan, and you’ve chosen to upgrade it to the 4K Netflix plan, you’ll pay tax on the difference you pay.
T-Mobile says most customers will see less than a $2 increase in their bill, with a majority seeing less than a $1 increase.
A link will be included in the SMS sent to affected customers, which is already live here. It gives a public-facing document about the tax change.
Fee increases for tax-excluded plans
In addition to the add-on tax changes, customers on plans that do not include taxes (like legacy Simple Choice plans) are going to see a small fee increase as well. This news also comes via internal documents shared with us and are embedded below.
The “Regulatory Programs & Telco Recovery Fee”, which is a combined category of fees on T-Mobile plans, is increasing.
For standard voice lines, the fee is increasing by $0.31 per line (from $3.18 to $3.49). Non-voice lines (like tablets and hotspots) will see a $0.24 increase per line (from $1.16 to $1.40).
Plans that include taxes, like Magenta, Magenta MAX, T-Mobile ONE, and others, won’t see a difference for this increase, but plans that aren’t tax-included, like Simple Choice and Essentials, will see the increase.
Customers impacted by either of these changes will receive an SMS text and an email informing them of the increases beginning on January 18th. T-Mobile for Business customers will also receive a paper letter. Both tax changes take effect on February 19th.
