Verizon pays no taxes. "Verizon was among 26 Fortune 500 corporations that were consistently profitable between 2008 and 2012 yet paid no federal income taxes, according to a new study," according to this article the Chronicle.

VZ collects a lot of money from the federal government and the taxpayers in the form of USF dollars, E-rate funds, and government contracts. Yet they pay no taxes!

Verizon generated total operating revenues of $120.6 billion for full-year 2013, an increase of 4.1 percent, or $4.7 billion, compared with 2012. [source=vz]

When "Verizon spokesman Bob Varettoni said the company paid $2.9 billion in state and federal income taxes over the time period covered", I wonder if he meant that they collected a bunch of fees and taxes and paid those to the taxing authorities. I wonder if they meant sales taxes and property taxes. Just not income taxes.

Now, after Comcast forces Netflix to pay for peering (in other words, buy bandwidth), VZ is insisting that heavy broadband users (like gamers) pay more. VZ CEO McAdams says, "I think it is only natural that the heavy users help contribute to the investment to keep the web healthy." Essentially, McAdam's saying that if you're using too much Internet, you should pay up.

One more paradox: VZ sells cloud services to Enterprises. It sells cloud services to the remote workers of these enterprise customers, who will then have to pay more to access cloud services when they work at home.

We need for VZ to go back to being a regulated utility monopoly.