This tax season, you could be getting free money. But about 71,000 Kansans haven’t claimed it yet.
That’s how many taxpayers have failed to request a telephone tax refund so far, leaving about $2.1 million in refunds on the table. Anyone with a phone is eligible for the one-time refund — usually about $30 to $60 — simply by filling out one line on a tax form.
But first you have to know it’s there. And a lot of people don’t.
“We don’t see why some people aren’t asking for a refund of taxes they’ve already paid,” said Michael Devine, a spokesman for the IRS in St. Louis.
Nationwide, more than 10 million people failed to claim the automatic refund. Of those, about half had their taxes professionally prepared.
Sheila Burenheide of Emporia’s H&R Block office has been glad to tell people about the refund.
“Everyone that has a phone gets it, so why not?” she said. The few ineligible customers she’s had so far have included an 18-year-old who didn’t pay their phone bill and one customer who didn’t have a phone, including a cell phone.
Burenheide said the long-distance excise tax was first levied in 1898 to help pay for the Spanish-American War, at a time when phone service was far less common. The tax then stayed on the books unnoticed for years. Recently, several federal courts have ruled that the tax shouldn’t be collected and the government stopped taking it last August.
Taxpayers can either take a standard deduction of $30 to $60 or can calculate the 3 percent tax directly if they have their phone bills from March 2003 through August 2006.
Be wary of anyone who says they can save you thousands of dollars through the refund, Divine said. At 3 percent, there would have to be more than $1 million in phone bills to get that kind of reward — not a likely scenario.
“That hasn’t been a problem in Kansas, but in some parts of the country, there have been visits to tax preparers by the criminal investigation part of the IRS,” Devine said. “When you go in to see a preparer and somebody else does your taxes, when you sign it, you’re responsible for it. You should pick your tax preparer like you pick your dentist or your attorney.”
Taxes must be mailed by April 17 this year, since April 15 is a Sunday and April 16 is Emancipation Day, a Washington, D.C. holiday.
Those who normally do not have to file a regular income tax return can still claim the refund by filing a 1040 EZ-T form. Those who forgot to claim the refund on their taxes should file an amended tax return, which is Form 1040X.