2008 Woodie Awards
Courts hang up phone tax
Jon-Michael St. Amant
Issue date: 2/13/07 Section: Campus News
- Page 1 of 1
Take special note to your tax refund forms this year.
The Internal Revenue Service is calling in a onetime telephone tax refund for up to $60 available to anyone with any sort of telephone.
Recent court decisions involving the U.S. Treasury Department have caused the government to give a refund on a federal excise telephone "luxury" tax on long distance phone calls used to help pay for the Spanish-American war.
According to the IRS Web site this refund is available to anyone who paid such taxes on landline, wireless, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. This basically means that if you have a home phone or cell phone that you have paid a tax on, it is now being refunded.
Subsequently, you need to make note of this on your tax refund form.
To accurately distribute the money for this refund, there is an additional form to be filled out which you must have 41 months worth of phone bills to correctly document.
However, for the majority citizens who don't have the correct information to do this, there is an easy way to get a standard payment. The amount of the refund depends on the amount of exemptions you file for.
If you file one exemption, your refund amount is $30, an amount that rises incrementally by $10 up until the summit of four exemptions and $60 is reached. This can be noted on line 71 of the 1040 form.
Also on this form, specific instructions are given. Additionally, if you are not filing for a refund this year for any reason, check the IRS website for a 1040 EZ-T form, which allows you apply for this special refund.
Though this sounds a bit complicated, it is a really good opportunity for American taxpayers who have been taxed for their whole lives to pay for a war fought before the 20th century.
This leads to the question of why this tax has gone on so long. Originally, it was a tax on the rich, generally the only group which could afford long distance calls and bundle packages. However, in the past few years, it has simply been a means of revenue for the Treasury Department rolling in $5.9 billion in 2005 according to CNNmoney.com.
The Internal Revenue Service is calling in a onetime telephone tax refund for up to $60 available to anyone with any sort of telephone.
Recent court decisions involving the U.S. Treasury Department have caused the government to give a refund on a federal excise telephone "luxury" tax on long distance phone calls used to help pay for the Spanish-American war.
According to the IRS Web site this refund is available to anyone who paid such taxes on landline, wireless, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. This basically means that if you have a home phone or cell phone that you have paid a tax on, it is now being refunded.
Subsequently, you need to make note of this on your tax refund form.
To accurately distribute the money for this refund, there is an additional form to be filled out which you must have 41 months worth of phone bills to correctly document.
However, for the majority citizens who don't have the correct information to do this, there is an easy way to get a standard payment. The amount of the refund depends on the amount of exemptions you file for.
If you file one exemption, your refund amount is $30, an amount that rises incrementally by $10 up until the summit of four exemptions and $60 is reached. This can be noted on line 71 of the 1040 form.
Also on this form, specific instructions are given. Additionally, if you are not filing for a refund this year for any reason, check the IRS website for a 1040 EZ-T form, which allows you apply for this special refund.
Though this sounds a bit complicated, it is a really good opportunity for American taxpayers who have been taxed for their whole lives to pay for a war fought before the 20th century.
This leads to the question of why this tax has gone on so long. Originally, it was a tax on the rich, generally the only group which could afford long distance calls and bundle packages. However, in the past few years, it has simply been a means of revenue for the Treasury Department rolling in $5.9 billion in 2005 according to CNNmoney.com.
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