How many out there know that we've been paying for the Spanish American War all these years via the excise tax on our phone bills?
Yup, that's right. I wonder if it's all paid by now? Well I would guess so plus more since now the government is offering us a one time credit this year. Did you know this? I guess we've more than paid the bill.
While I don't know who, somebody figured this out and since last August or September this tax has been eliminated from our phone bills. Figures doesn't it? A supposed temporary tax usually isn't all that temporary.
So the deal is you can go back the last 41 months, add up your excise tax on long distance calls only and claim it on a special form just for this occasion. It's Form #8913 and your accountant will know about this. The form is a bit of work. You put down the total amount of long distance calls in one column and then the corresponding tax in another in three month increments. There's a line for each three month period and you have to fill this out line by line.
My husband, a CPA, did this for kicks for one of our clients and it came out to $11. So this lady got an $11 credit. Too much work to bother? Well there is an easier way to do this. You can take an average using April or/and Sept 06 as a guide and do it that way. It's kind of complicated. I think it's using April with the excise tax included and September without the tax included and figure it out. There's a way but I can't remember how it's done. This is all new and only for this year.
The easiest tho is just take an average the IRS allows you which is a $30-60 amount depending on dependents. So for a couple it's either $30 or $40 and with dependents it can reach $60 as the max. If you think it's more than you'll want to do the listing out as described to get more than the $60.
So I'm wondering where has all this money gone to all these years? Shouldn't we at least get interest on this? We only get to go back 41 months but for some of us we've been paying for the Spanish American War for alot longer than that.
Maybe they'll start another phone tax later to help pay for the Iraqi War. I don't even want to imagine how long it would take us to pay that one off.