New Yorkers staggering from the nation’s highest cell phone taxes may have a solution: sending the bill out of state.

Cellular phone bills in New York carry local taxes, transportation taxes, state surcharges, federal universal service charge, state telecommunications tax, federal excise tax, 911 fees, an Enhanced 911 fee. On a $69.99 monthly bill that works out to 23% in fees and taxes.

“The amount of tax money I’m paying is kind of numbing,” said one native New Yorker, Jason Berkeley.

Mr. Berkeley just returned to the city after 11 years in Wisconsin, which ranked 41st in cell-phone taxes according to a July report from research firm Kimbell Sherman Ellis. Wisconsin’s taxes on cell phones are about half of those in New York, which was first in the survey.

The federal government taxes cell phone use at a rate of 5.28%, putting mobile phones in a category with tires, cigarettes, gasoline, and firearms as the only consumables the federal government taxes. But states and local governments determine the rest of the tax.

Is there any way around the extra fees?

Yes. The mobile phone service providers – Verizon Wireless, Sprint-PCS, Cingular, and the rest – calculate taxes based on the consumer’s billing address. Consumers with family from out of state can transfer their bills to the family address. Area codes for the phones can be assigned independent of the billing address.

“I share minutes with my mother in Boston,” said Sage Anderson, a 23-year-old editorial assistant. Despite its reputation as “Taxachussetts”, the state’s cell phone taxes are only 11.83%. On the $69.99 monthly bill, she saves $93.82 a year.

To beat the local taxes, a cell phone user would need a billing address in a state with low telecommunication taxes, like, say, Wisconsin, or, better yet, Nevada.

The state known primarily for Vegas and gambling is also the “No tax state,” as a spokeswoman for the Public Utilities Commission, Lisa Wagner, called it. With just 1.11% in 911 and deaf-relay fees, Nevada has the lowest cell phone taxes in the country.

To get a Nevada address, consumers can go to the post office nearest their home, get an application form for a post office box and mail it to the Nevada post office of their choice. Post office boxes are priced based on real estate values, and there’s lots of land out west. So don’t pick Vegas. Pick a mid-sized city like Carson City, whose post office charges $19 for a six-month post office box rental, about $38 for the year.

Once the post office box is rented, consumers can call their provider and change the billing address and electronic billing so that the bill will be delivered to e-mail accounts rather than Nevada. Many banks offer online banking with automatic bill pay, another way to avoid having to deal with the actual paper bill.

The tax savings on a $69.99 monthly bill works out to $102 a year, even after paying for the Nevada post office box.

When The New York Sun ran this scenario by New York city and state tax officials, no one was quite sure whether it constituted fraud or not. None of the spokesmen, nor the people they checked with, had ever considered the issue before.

“I don’t think it’s a major problem,” said a spokesman for the New York State Department of Finance, Mike Bucci. “Our enforcement agents are more concerned with things like cigarette smuggling and people evading property on $10 million pieces of land.”

Mr. Bucci did point out that if it is fraud, legal fees would vastly outweigh savings.

But for some people, there is a question of principle.

A graduate student at New York University, Jody Sabel, who is originally from Arizona, said she was stunned by the tax burden here.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “A lot goes to the government. And I’d be curious to know why more here than in other states.”

In New York City, the state and the city levy a combined flat fee of $1.50 to pay for 911. But a 2002 audit by the New York State Comptroller, Carl Mc-Call, found that much of the money was going into the state’s general fund, where it went toward items such as lawn mowing on state property and not toward the Enhanced 911 system it was intended for. By April of this year, the state and city had collected $281 million since the fees began in 1992, and no work had been done. Mr. Mc-Call’s report showed the New Jersey and 11 other states were way ahead of New York in developing the system, which is designed to pinpoint the location of callers on a mobile phone.

One local New York City tax, the 1.5% Utility Gross Receipts Surcharge, is a leftover from the days when all utilities were monopolies. Now it’s billed to wireless carriers, who then pass it on to consumers as a kind of sales tax on service.

And the problem isn’t getting any better. A senior analyst for Jupiter Research, Joe Laszlow, points out that as cell phones proliferate, families are dropping their second and third phone lines. Many state tax systems viewed extra phone lines as luxuries and taxed them heavily. States may need to replace that revenue.

“That might inspire people to start looking for ways to get a phone from other states, depends on how greedy specific states get,” Mr. Laszlow said.

Industry estimates say that New York City has an unusually high percentage of the 8.5 million Americans who are using a mobile phone instead of a landline. The people tend to pay for more minutes, and therefore might be more willing to try out the Nevada experiment.