Not long after FCC chairman Tom Wheeler swore that the FCC takeover of the Internet wouldn't result in new taxes or fees, it appears likely that new taxes will show up on Internet bills in the near future.

In mid-March, Wheeler told a House panel that he couldn't, in fact, rule out a new Internet fee to help pay for the government's "Universal Service Fund" (USF).

By shoving the Internet into the agency's Title II regulatory scheme — which was set up 80 years ago to regulate the telephone monopoly — Wheeler made it possible to do so.

He said a special board representing federal and state governments was weighing whether to impose that tax. Right now, the USF is paid for by a tax added to long-distance bills.

"How they resolve things in the future I do not know," he told the House committee.

The Los Angeles Times doesn't seem to think so. An article published Thursday leads with: "Recently adopted net neutrality regulations soon could make your monthly Internet bill more complicated — and potentially more expensive."

It quotes Hal Singer of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, who figures the USF fee and various other charges that state and local government are likely to add to Internet bills will cost consumers around $11 billion a year.