How many Dopers know about the Federal Phone Excise Tax Refund being offered for the 2006 tax year? It’s purportedly the most wide-reaching refund in IRS history. Has anyone claimed this on their return, and if so, how did you go about it?
There are standard deduction amounts (based on your declared exemptions) being offered for those who’d rather not go through previous bills dating back to 2003, assuming you actually still have them. Many, I’m sure, do not. I was interested in itemizing all of mine based on the bills I have on record since 2005. I only have bundled service with Cingular, so the refund would apply to any federal tax paid on the bills since it is bundled with local service. Supposedly, this should be labelled as one of the following on the phone bill:
[ul]
[li]Federal[/li][li]Federal Excise 3% [/li][li]Federal Excise @ 3% [/li][li]Federal Excise Tax [/li][li]Federal Tax [/li][li]Fed Excise Tax [/li][li]FET[/li][/ul]
I don’t see any of these terms in my Cingular bills, only a section named Federal Universal Service Charge and State/Municipal Telecommunications Tax. Best guess is that it’s the former, and I could just call Cingular to make sure, but I thought I’d see if anyone else (primarily cellular customers) knows about this refund and how they’ve gone about declaring it.
Turbo Tax has a check box that says something to the effect of “Did you have a land line telephone during or before XXXX” (Don’t remember the year). From there you can pull up your records and add up the tax, but I just took the standard deduction.
In a related note, the bastards at H&R Block charge you $3 just to simply put one number ($30, $40, whatever) on that line. Thats some world-class gouging there.
It’s very easy on TurboTax to get the standard deduction. I guesstimated how much more I might get by going through the bills, and how much my time was worth to me, and the choice was easy.
It is definitely not the Universal Service Charge. I know what that is, and it’s something entirely different …
[edit]Just to clarify–this is the compensation for the company’s mandatory contribution to the federal Universal Service Fund. Telecom companies have been required to donate for some time, and were given permission ~10 years ago to recoup some of the costs from their subscribers …[/edit]
I had the old bills for land line and cell phone. (being a pack rat has its advantages!) The tax savings was $1.00 each month for the land line (made me mad that they rounded down each month) and $2.00 for cell phone. I was able to claim $134.00