Resources on the Federal Telephone Excise Tax Refund

with the caveat that I am not an accountant or a lawyer or an expert on taxation

If you've started unpacking your tax forms, you may have noticed a few new ones--Form 1040EZ-T [.pdf] and Form 8913 [.pdf]. Both of these relate to the Federal Telephone Excise Tax Refund.

Basically, if you've had long distance or bundled phone service (or cell phone service, or VoIP) in the past three years, you're eligible to get some money back. If you're filing a tax return, there will be a line on the return where you can claim a standard amount of between $30-60. If you have phone bills for the past 41 months and want to fill out another form (8913), you can do that instead. If you don't have to file taxes, you can still get this refund by filling out Form 1040EZ-T.

Here are a few links with more information:

• Telephone Excise Tax Refund from the IRS

• FAQs from the IRS on the refund

• Telephone Excise Tax Refund page from About.com

• Federal telephone excise tax page from Wikipedia, which (at least right now) contains some history and links to the court case that led to this refund

• refundsforgood.com a website with step-by-step instructions for getting your telephone tax refund. It also encourages people to donate their refund to various social causes.

One question that I haven't been able to answer yet is how this refund will affect telephone tax resisters. One popular method of protesting wars has traditionally been to withhold some or all of your taxes (which is how Thoreau ended up in jail and, as a result, ended up writing "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience"). The telephone excise tax, which was establlished to help fund the Spanish-American War, is a popular target. You can read more about war tax resistance from the War Resisters League. I'll post more about how telephone tax resisters will be affected by this refund when I find it.

• Hang up on War: Get a Tax Refund--an article by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman with more background on the history of the telephone excise tax. Notes that the tax has been removed from long distance, high-speed internet, and other premium services, "the tax remains for older, standard local phone services and rental of equipment that enables the disabled to use phones."

Laura

General Tax Resources

• Free Online Filing of Income Taxes page from Radical Reference

• Tax Preparation Links from a librarian at the Central Kansas Library System

• How to Claim Deductions Missing on this year's tax forms, plus more background from Marketplace