Excess Tax Excised
Yea, it was a weak headline, but amusing. To me, at least.
Seriously, I got the email from my mom about the personal telephone excise tax refund a few weeks ago. If it came from my mom I know it has run the rounds of the Web at least once, maybe twice.
The personal stuff is pretty straightforward - flat deduction amounts based on the number of land lines in your home unless you have vast quantities of paper to show what you've actually been charged over the years, then you can claim that amount.
In November the IRS announced a formula for businesses and nonprofits to compute their excise tax refund. You can find out more in the IRS press release about it. For details about the personal version, check out the FAQ.
For those of you who avoid the news (like me) and have no idea what I'm talking about (I didn't til my mom emailed me, I live under a rock, what can I say?) here's the scoop.
The telephone tax refund is a one-time payment available on your 2006 federal income tax return that is designed to refund federal excise taxes on long distance telephone service. This is an old tax that was assessed on your toll (long distance) calls until August of 2006. It was based on how long the distance was for the call being placed and how long you were on the call. When phone companies began to offer flat fee phone services, several court challenges to the tax cropped up. They pointed out that flat fee/rate phone service had nothing to do with the distance or length of the phone call and that the excise tax should no longer be assessed.
The courts agreed with the challengers and phone companies were given notice to stop assessing the federal excise tax as of Aug 30, 2006.
There... Now, it's December 8th, better start digging up those old phone bills!
Seriously, I got the email from my mom about the personal telephone excise tax refund a few weeks ago. If it came from my mom I know it has run the rounds of the Web at least once, maybe twice.
The personal stuff is pretty straightforward - flat deduction amounts based on the number of land lines in your home unless you have vast quantities of paper to show what you've actually been charged over the years, then you can claim that amount.
In November the IRS announced a formula for businesses and nonprofits to compute their excise tax refund. You can find out more in the IRS press release about it. For details about the personal version, check out the FAQ.
For those of you who avoid the news (like me) and have no idea what I'm talking about (I didn't til my mom emailed me, I live under a rock, what can I say?) here's the scoop.
The telephone tax refund is a one-time payment available on your 2006 federal income tax return that is designed to refund federal excise taxes on long distance telephone service. This is an old tax that was assessed on your toll (long distance) calls until August of 2006. It was based on how long the distance was for the call being placed and how long you were on the call. When phone companies began to offer flat fee phone services, several court challenges to the tax cropped up. They pointed out that flat fee/rate phone service had nothing to do with the distance or length of the phone call and that the excise tax should no longer be assessed.
The courts agreed with the challengers and phone companies were given notice to stop assessing the federal excise tax as of Aug 30, 2006.
There... Now, it's December 8th, better start digging up those old phone bills!
Labels: Taxes
posted by Dy at 1:28 PM
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