Phone-Tax Refund

In August, the Treasury Department stopped collecting a 3 percent surcharge on long distance calls and bundled service that dated back to 1898 - a tariff often referred to as the Spanish American War tax because Congress passed it to help fund that conflict. The tax is still being assessed on local phone service.

In announcing the exclusion of long distance in May, Treasury also said it will refund any money collected under the tax since March 2003, a total of 41 months overall. The Internal Revenue Service is adding a line to its various 1040 forms to claim the refund on 2006 tax returns filed next year. Businesses and tax-exempt organizations need to fill out Form 8913, "Credit for Federal Telephone Excise Tax Paid," to claim the refund with their returns. Those who wouldn't otherwise need to file tax returns can file a form called "1040EZ-T" to request the refund.

Individuals can claim a standard refund of between $30 and $60, as follows: $30 for one person plus $10 for each additional exemption claimed on the return. So a solo filer would claim a refund of $30, while a married couple with two children would claim $60. The IRS said it devised these standard amounts based on phone usage data for households of different sizes.

This is how I plan to calculate my Excess Federal Taxes:
1) Get a copy of the new bill post August 2006, when they stopped collecting the Federal Tax (i.e. Oct. 2006)
2) Get a copy of an old bill of yours prior to August 2006, when they were collecting the Federal Tax (i.e. June 2005)
3) See which tax appears in the old bill that doesn’t appear in the newer one…and that is your excess amount.
4) You can take that amount and multiply it by 41 and that is your refund amount or you can total the amount in the previous 41 bills, which also is my option…just gotta find the old bills.

Directly from the IRS website:
IRS announcement of Telephone Tax Refund: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=161504,00.html

IRS Q&A on telephone tax refund for individuals: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id161506,00.html

IRS Q&A on telephone tax refund for businesses:
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id164310,00.html