Prepared911 surcharge on communications services · Tennessee Department of Revenue

Tennessee 911 surcharge remittance

We prepare a filing packet for the TV Programming and Telecommunications Sales and Use Tax Return. You key the amounts into that return, which you already file.

These amounts are line items inside a general return you already file. What follows is the computed figure set and where each figure goes on that return.

Tennessee publishes no 911 form. The surcharge is Schedule D of the TV Programming and Telecommunications Sales and Use Tax Return, filed through the Department of Revenue’s taxpayer access point, and the schedule’s total carries to that return’s front page. What the product produces for Tennessee is the schedule’s figures in the schedule’s own line order — the number of communications services billed, the gross 911 collections, the administrative fee for collection, and the surcharge that carries forward — plus where each one lands, for a return the provider is already filing.

The rate in force now

Rate: $1.50 per line per month · 911 surcharge
Effective: 2021-01-01 → current
Cite: Tenn. Code Ann. §7-86-128, as increased by Senate Joint Resolution 836 (2020) ratifying the emergency communications board’s decision
Form rev.: Form SLS 458 instructions RV-R0010701 (2/25)
Source: Tennessee Department of Revenue — Important Notice 20-18, 911 Surcharge Rate Change (October 2020)
Retrieved: Wed, August 12, 2026 · two independent fetches agree

Cadence

Monthly · set by statute

“911 surcharge revenue actually collected by a dealer shall be remitted to the department of revenue monthly.”

Tenn. Code Ann. §7-86-128(e), as substituted by 2016 Pub. Ch. 1047 §3

The monthly cadence is statutory rather than an assigned filing frequency, which matters because the host return is a sales-and-use-tax instrument whose account can carry a different frequency.

Whether the general sales-and-use-tax quarterly election reaches this return, and how it would interact with the statutory monthly remittance, is unresolved between the two research passes. The product computes only the monthly cadence for Tennessee until that is answered.

Due dates

TV Programming and Telecommunications return and payment

To: Tennessee Department of Revenue
Rule: the 20th of the month after the period ends
Weekends: the date shown is not moved for a weekend or holiday
Applies to: Monthly

“The due date for the TV Programming and Telecommunications Services return is the 20th of the month following the end of the reporting period.”

Form SLS 458 instructions, RV-R0010701 (2/25)

Tennessee publishes no weekend or holiday rule for this deadline in the sources the research record reached, so the engine applies none and renders the twentieth as the instructions state it.

The Department’s instructions set a minimum late-filing penalty that applies even where the return reflects no tax due. It is recorded as a fact about the state’s own administration and never rendered as a reason to hurry.

Counting rule

Per communications service. Each separately priced monthly communications service sold to a subscriber carries its own surcharge, so five separately priced services are five surcharges, and the state’s own counting unit is the schedule’s first line: the number of communications services being billed. The collection duty attaches only where the monthly charge for the service is five dollars or more. No more than two hundred surcharges a month may be imposed on a single subscriber for a single building at a single fixed address.

Interconnected VoIP is covered without a separate rule track. The Department’s own manual defines telecommunications services — the category this surcharge rides — as the electronic transmission or routing of voice without regard to whether the service is called voice over internet protocol, and lists it as an example alongside local, long-distance and cellular service. A VoIP retailer is a dealer of communications service like any other, filing the same schedule at the same amount. Neither research pass found any trunk, burstable or concurrent-call equivalency for Tennessee, so the count is the number of separately priced services rather than a capacity figure.

Per-customer cap
Two hundred surcharges a month per subscriber for a single building at a single fixed address. The cap is single-sourced: one research pass read it from the Department’s notice and its sales and use tax manual, and the other recorded that it could not locate the statutory text at all — a gap against a source rather than a competing figure. How the cap interacts with the five-dollar monthly-charge floor, and which is applied first, is not addressed by any text either pass reached.

“No additional or local 911 surcharges on communications service or prepaid communications service shall be permitted.”

Tenn. Code Ann. §7-86-128(e)

Collection allowance

2.00%

Applies to: the gross amount collected
On the form: Schedule D, Line 5 — Administrative fee for collection

“a dealer that collects and remits the 911 surcharge may retain two percent of its 911 surcharge collections”

Tenn. Code Ann. §7-86-128(a)(1) and (f)(2), as enacted by 2016 Pub. Ch. 1047 §§2 and 4

Two percent, taken on the schedule’s own line 5, reduced from three percent when collection moved to the Department in 2017. It is forfeited on any surcharge amount the Department collects by audit rather than by the dealer’s own remittance. Do not confuse it with the smaller share the Department itself deducts on the way to the emergency communications board; that happens after remittance and is never a provider-facing allowance.

Rate history

2 windows on record

The engine resolves the window that covers the filing period, never the latest one. A back period therefore prices at the rate that was in force for it.

2017-07-01 → 2020-12-31
$1.16 per line per month · 911 surcharge
Tenn. Code Ann. §7-86-128, as enacted by 2016 Pub. Ch. 1047
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/revenue/documents/notices/sales/sales17-05.pdf · retrieved Wed, August 12, 2026
The amount carried into the Department-collected regime when collection moved from the emergency communications board on July 1, 2017. Both research passes read it from the Department’s own notices.
Tennessee’s recorded history begins here. Periods before July 1, 2017 were remitted to the emergency communications board on a channel this record does not describe, and the engine refuses them.
2021-01-01 → current
$1.50 per line per month · 911 surcharge
Tenn. Code Ann. §7-86-128, as increased by Senate Joint Resolution 836 (2020) ratifying the emergency communications board’s decision
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/revenue/documents/notices/general/general20-18.pdf · retrieved Wed, August 12, 2026
The Department’s notice fixes the trigger to the date of sale: providers should begin collecting the new amount on sales of these services made on or after January 1, 2021. Monthly periods align with that boundary, so no Tennessee period straddles it.
A 2026 resolution that would have raised the surcharge further was vetoed and did not take effect. It changes nothing about the current amount and is named so a later reader does not price a period against it, and Tennessee is worth watching in a drift check because the sponsor signalled an intent to refile.

Zero-report rule

not published

Zero report · not on record

Tennessee does not state in so many words that a period with no liability still requires a filed return. Both research passes inferred that it does — one from the instructions’ minimum late-filing penalty, which applies even where the return reflects no tax due, and the other from ordinary registered-dealer practice — and neither found any text exempting a dealer from filing. No standalone zero-report form exists and no declaration specific to a zero period exists. The return does carry the state’s own penalties-of-perjury declaration above the taxpayer signature line, which is the provider’s act; the product surfaces that the state requires it and never composes wording for it.

Searched: Form SLS 458 and its instructions in full, the Department’s 911 surcharge landing page, its sales and use tax manual, and the enacting public chapter.

Record retention

3 years

The Department’s general dealer retention rule rather than a 911-specific one, reaching this surcharge because the statute imports the sales and use tax procedures and directs 911 audits to coincide with the Department’s ordinary sales and use tax audit of the same dealer. Longer where an assessment is under appeal, until the appeal is finally decided. One research pass sourced the rule and the other recorded that nothing 911-specific exists.

“Dealers must keep records at least three years from December 31 of the year the associated sales and use tax return was filed”

Tennessee Department of Revenue, Sales and Use Tax Manual (December 2025 edition), record retention

Registration

A dealer account on the Department’s taxpayer access point is the registration — the same account used to file the return that carries Schedule D. There is no 911-only registration and no registration with the emergency communications board under the post-2017 regime.

https://tntap.tn.gov/eservices

The statute directs the Department to establish registration and payment procedures for these dealers that substantially coincide with the procedures under the state’s retailers’ sales tax act, which is why the account is an ordinary dealer account rather than a 911 account.

A return you already file

Host return: TV Programming and Telecommunications Sales and Use Tax Return (SLS 458 (instructions RV-R0010701, revision 2/25, applying to periods beginning on or after February 1, 2025))
Where it lands: Schedule D of the return, lines 1 through 6: the number of communications services being billed, the gross collections of 911 surcharge, the amount collected of uncollectible deductions from prior periods, the net collection, the administrative fee for collection, and the 911 surcharge itself — which carries to page 1, line 17. Page 1, line 18 is the prepaid wireless 911 surcharge, whose remitter is the point-of-sale retailer; nothing this product computes ever populates it.
Portal: https://tntap.tn.gov/eservices

The current instructions state that a taxpayer submits the return and the payment from the return’s payment line through the Department’s website, or by mailing to the Department in Nashville. An older edition of the same document was marked as a worksheet not to be submitted; the current revision carries no such marking and offers both paths.

Remit to

State, single agency

Agency: Tennessee Department of Revenue
Division: Sales and use tax — television and telecommunications
Payee: Tennessee Department of Revenue
Address: Filed and paid through the taxpayer access point; the current instructions also allow mailing to 500 Deaderick Street, Andrew Jackson State Office Building, Nashville, TN 37242.
Contact: https://www.tn.gov/revenue/taxes/sales-and-use-tax/television-and-telecommunications-tax/911-surcharge.html
Rate set by: The General Assembly, which ratified the emergency communications board’s rate-increase decision. The board is the statutory beneficiary and does not collect from providers for periods on or after July 1, 2017.

Out of scope

What this page does not cover.

The prepaid wireless 911 surcharge on the same return
The return’s front page carries it on its own line, and its remitter is the point-of-sale retailer rather than the service provider. The schedule’s own instruction draws the line by excluding prepaid wireless from the gross collections figure, and this product never computes or populates that line.
Local 911 surcharges
Tennessee forecloses local stacking on communications service by statute, so there is no local component for a provider to compute or remit and no local filing to name. The board’s redistribution to the local emergency communications districts happens downstream of one remittance.
The rest of the host return
Schedule D is the 911 surcharge; the return around it carries the television programming and telecommunications sales and use tax, and another schedule carries a county-specific transit surcharge on tangible personal property and digital products that does not apply to telecommunications service. This product computes the 911 schedule only.
Companion surcharges
Neither research pass found a 988, telecommunications relay or poison-control field anywhere on this return. The 911 schedule is single-purpose.

Everything else this record does not know

Citations · not on record

The codified statutory text of Tennessee’s definitions section and of the surcharge section as currently amended was not read directly by either research pass. Every route was blocked: the publisher the state’s own emergency communications board names is behind a scripted gate, and three third-party copies returned errors or challenge pages. The statutory content here is corroborated instead through the enacting public chapter, read verbatim from the Secretary of State’s own publication, and through the Department’s notices and tax manual. The post-2020 codified wording carrying the current amount has not been read on its face; the amount itself rests on the Department’s own notice.

Searched: The designated statutory publisher, three third-party copies of the chapter, and the Secretary of State’s session-law publication.

Cadence · not on record

Whether the general sales-and-use-tax quarterly election reaches this return, and how it would interact with the statutory monthly remittance duty, is unresolved. The two research passes came at it from opposite sides — one carried the general threshold over by analogy and flagged it, the other read the statute as making the 911 line monthly whatever the account’s assigned frequency — and the return exposes only a filing-period field without restating any frequency rule. The product computes only the monthly cadence until it is answered.

Searched: Form SLS 458 and its instructions, the Department’s due-dates page, and the enacting public chapter.

Counting rule · not on record

How the two-hundred-surcharge cap interacts with the five-dollar monthly-charge floor — whether the cap is applied before or after the floor test — is unaddressed by any text either research pass reached. The cap itself is single-sourced to the Department’s notice and its tax manual, with the other pass recording an explicit gap rather than a competing figure.

Searched: The Department’s notice on the monthly communication services surcharge, its sales and use tax manual, and every reachable route to the definitions section.

Rate history · not on record

The form, cadence and process of the pre-July-2017 regime, when the emergency communications board collected this surcharge directly, are not established. The Department’s notice says only that collections and remittance forms for earlier periods must be submitted to that board. A Tennessee back period before July 2017 cannot be prepared from this record, which is a real limit on the catch-up case even though the ordinary limitations period makes such periods unlikely.

Searched: The Department’s notice on the transition, the emergency communications board’s own pages, and the enacting public chapter.

Sources

Every fact above traces to one of these, retrieved Wed, August 12, 2026.

The record was reached by two independent research passes that agreed. Each source below opens at the address it was read from, with the date it was read.

Tennessee Department of Revenue — Important Notice 17-05

The amount carried into the Department-collected regime, the two-hundred-surcharge cap, the transition of collection from the emergency communications board effective July 1, 2017, and that earlier periods go to that board.