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Jan. 25th, 2007 08:24 pmThe 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.
The obvious next question, of course, is what dollar amount to enter on those forms.
One perfectly acceptable but tedious solution would be to add up the amounts actually paid, a process that presumes you saved all 41 monthly phone bills or have online access to view them. But even if you have them, most bills don't break down the tax into separate charges for local and long-distance service. Therefore, you'd need to calculate the portion of the tax payment that was related to local service and then subtract that amount from the total.
Fortunately, the IRS also has devised some shortcuts to simplify matters.
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.
The obvious next question, of course, is what dollar amount to enter on those forms.
One perfectly acceptable but tedious solution would be to add up the amounts actually paid, a process that presumes you saved all 41 monthly phone bills or have online access to view them. But even if you have them, most bills don't break down the tax into separate charges for local and long-distance service. Therefore, you'd need to calculate the portion of the tax payment that was related to local service and then subtract that amount from the total.
Fortunately, the IRS also has devised some shortcuts to simplify matters.
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.
