Wireless industry group CTIA said Tuesday that it would throw its support behind legislation aimed at ending a 20-year old tax on the personal use of business-supplied cellular phones. At the time the policy was instituted in 1989, cell phones were a luxury item seldom used because of their prohibitive expense.

Now that cell phones are near-ubiquitous, and on top of that much cheaper to use, the law makes little sense any more. Still, users are required to keep detailed logs of their phone usage to comply with these rules. This is because that law considers personal use of these phones as income, which is then subject to federal taxes.

The IRS is currently collecting comments on the policy, as it considers a repeal. Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) and Representatives Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) also have introduced legislation which would eliminate the tax.

Under the so-called MOBILE Act, a full repeal would be instituted. The IRS is considering a similar repeal, although logging would still be required. CTIA supports the legislation, urging Congress to act on it this year.

While I can understand the IRS’ desire to list a company-provided cell phone as a luxury item subject to tax — at the same time, the benefit of its use is far less than it was in 1989. 20 years ago, if you had a cell phone, it sure was a benefit.

These days, everybody has one. It’s almost like taxing only a select few for something that everybody else has. Simply put, it has become an unfair tax.

In fact, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman may have put it best when he called for a a repeal of the tax himself: he called it “obsolete.. burdensome, poorly understood by taxpayers, and difficult for the IRS to administer consistently.”

Seems to me that if you have somebody from the IRS itself calling for a policy to go, they would probably know best if its worth the trouble or not, no?