My father has his own business. He is getting near retirement and for
the most part, just working for existing clients and not taking in any
new business. His yearly income for his line of work is not that
great, mostly supplimental income. He no longer advertises, and
doesn't have a yellow page listing, I believe there is just an
additional line in the white pages that lists his business name, along
with his name on another line. He
has a business phone through Verizon, and during the peak month of his
business, receives maybe a couple dozen calls, and places about that
many relating to his business. He does not have a home office, and
this phone is used as the main phone in the house for all household
calls.

He would like to get a private line to save money on his phone bill,
but he can't get a straight answer as to if he still needs a business
line. Can someone point me to a page that shows when it is required to
have a business phone?

Hi

It depends on the package he has.
For example:
"Verizon Freedomsm is offered to residential customers only and for
residential use only."

- http://www22.verizon.com/CustomerHelp/CGI-BIN/SmartHelp.asp?St=258&E=0000000000001611542&K=3761&Sxi=7&Case=30837&varset_statename=NY&varset_coast=East

You or he should check his current packages to see if they allows business calls.

Ratty

BTW...

If you find this 'answer' sufficient...please donate your extra $4.50
to the disaster relief fund of your choice!

Good Luck.

I use Verizon's plan for separate bussiness like and it comes out to
about $14/month. I guess this is the minimum Ihave found so far.

I am looking for a webpage that states something to the effect of:
Under federal law Business lines are required for customers that...
Where then it says something like "has an office" "advertises for
business" "places 'X' number of calls" "results in '$XXX' dollars in
sales per year".

My father will not do anything that is considered 'grey area', so I
need something that gives an absolute answer. He is worried that if he
switches to a private phone, the government is going to slap him with
a big fine because he used it for business. Like I said before, the
most calls he uses for his business is about a couple dozen a month,
and during the winter, he pretty much shuts down and maybe only places
or receives a handful of calls a month.

Where did you get the idea that you are required by law to have a
separate business phone number for any reason?  I have never heard of
anything like this and I would be surprised if it was true.  Plenty of
people use their home phone number to receive business calls.

I did not get the idea that it is the law. My father did, he's
paranoid about things like that. He's worried that if he switches to a
residential phone, the IRS will audit him next year, and slap a big
fine on him. Yeah, I know most of us wouldn't think twice about it,
but you haven't lived with my father. A few years back, he was really
worried about getting internet because he was so afraid of someone
stealing all of our checkbook information off of the computer.

If it was me in the same situation, there would be a res. line at my
house, but its not. I just need something to prove to him that he is
allowed to have a res. line in the situation, and that he won't have
any troubles if he does.

It's going to be impossible to prove a negative (i.e. there is no law
or IRS regulation stating that you must have a business phone line),
so what kind of answer are you looking for?

You don't need to get a separate "business" phone line. My wife and I
have a home business, http://www.jandmjewelrydesign.com/, and we
didn't get a separate business phone.

There is no law that requires you to have a business phone line for
business use, HOWEVER, each phone company has "rules" that require
business to pay higher business rates, the reasoning is that a
business telephone is much busier than a residential phone.

If you have a single line, there is no reason to pay these rates as
this is primarily a home phone. In a home office, even if the phone is
used for business yo won't be asked to upgrade to business rates until
you get multiple lines because the home phone is too busy to handle
the traffic.