Did you get your telephone excise tax refund? My guess is no. It is likely that most people did not even know about it and therefore they did not receive their allotted money.
The telephone excise tax has been around since 1898. The tax was initiated to fund the Spanish American War. Up until 2006, we were all paying this federal tax imposed on our telephones without even realizing what it for.
According to a recent study, only 17 percent of American’s filed for their refund. Sadly the numbers are even worse for small businesses as only 5.6 percent of businesses (of all sizes) that could have claimed the credit, did so. The good news is, if you want the refund, it is still available to you. There is still a huge surplus of this money available. The bad news is; that you will need to amend your 2006 tax returns in order to receive your money.
It is widely believed that many small businesses did not apply for the refund because they thought it would be too much work gathering the required information for the IRS. Businesses had to figure the tax as a percentage of their phone expenses attributable to the excise tax on long distance. Businesses had to figure the tax as a percentage of their April 2006 telephone bill and compare it against their September 2006 telephone bill. The September bill only had the tax on the local telephone service and the April bill had both the excise tax on the long distance and local bills. Cell phones are also subject to this tax so those customers are also able to receive a refund on those accounts. The difference between the 2 percentages was supposed to be multiplied by the total telephone expenses for the 41-month period.
Personally, I wonder how many other Americans did not know that this refund was available to them. Count me as one of them! Visit www.irs.gov for more information.
