The Internal Revenue Service recently issued a notice outlining how individuals and businesses can obtain refunds and credits on their 2006 returns of the long-distance telephone excise tax.
The notice says that individuals can either claim a standard amount -- $30 for singles, or $60 for married couples with two or more children -- on Form 1040. The alternative is to file a claim for the actual excise taxes paid between March 1, 2003, and July 31, 2006, on Form 8913, “Credit for Federal Telephone Excise Tax Paid.”
Businesses, tax-exempt organizations, and individuals filing Schedules C, E, or F with gross receipts in excess of $25,000 may either file a claim based on the actual excise tax paid for the past 41 months, or they may use a special formula to calculate their refund based on two months of bills.
The IRS agreed to stop collecting the tax after several courts found that continued collection of the tax, which was first levied in 1898 as a temporary assessment to help defray the costs of the Spanish-American War, was illegal.
The full notice is available online at
Separately, the agency’s Statistics of Income Division also released 10 papers from the 2006 IRS Research Conference, which was held June 14 and 15 in Washington. Summaries and links to the papers can be accessed at
