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Claiming 8913 - Federal Telephone Excise Tax

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rogzballz

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? MA

Instead of taking the standard amount offered by the Gov. I am planning on adding up all the Fed. excise tax stated on my bills. Then I noticed that Nextel/Sprint had charged me an additional "Federal - Univ Serv Assessment, Federal - Programs Cost Recovery, and Federal - TRS Charge". At the bottom of the bill it states - "Fees Nextel elects to collect to recover its costs of funding and complying with gov. mandates and initiatives."

Does anyone know if we can claim these extra charges made by the phone company?
Because if the company claims this back from the Gov. wouldn't they be paid twice ?!?!

It may not seem like a lot to most people, but my phone bills are like $200/mnth so it'll definitely add up if i can claim this.

Thanks!
 


tranquility

Senior Member
No, you cannot. The tax which was declared unconstitutional was a specific tax. To not take the safe harbor amount you need to go through a specific and detailed process. Only individuals can use the safe harbor amounts and we only use that on the returns we prepare. If a client is more insistent about doing the calculation, we will put his calculations on the return. But, once he sees the process to calculate the amount they have always told us to take the safe harbor.

Businesses cannot take the safe harbor amount and it needs to be calculated. Any business clients we have we have provided the information regarding the credit and told them that it would cost them too much to have us calculate the amount and that they could calculate it if they wish. None of our business clients have done the calculation as yet.

A person has to have a good amount of free time to learn and go through the calculations. Knock yourself out, but I bet there are better ways to spend your time. Also, since some tax protestor type people have claimed exhorbidant amounts for the credit, the IRS has let it be known they are going to be looking very close at the amount and any unusual numbers will have any refund held up for further investigation.
 

rogzballz

Junior Member
As a matter of fact, I spent about 4 hours at work copying my bills since 2004 (Missing 2003 :mad: ). Added up the all the Federal Excise Taxes then plugged it into CompleteTax.com which did the interest calculations. It only turned out to be like $12 more than the standard rate.

I then calculated the fees on which Nextel/Sprint had charged me, and that would've been ~$95 more!

Anyways - thanks for answering my question. I guess for the $12 it's not worth the IRS Breathing down my neck :rolleyes: but at least I know what I'm forfeiting over and I won't regret not checking.
 

tranquility

Senior Member
The numbers you list do not seem unusual in any way. I don't think you will get special attention by using those numbers. It's when the credit goes up to the thousands and, maybe, hundreds of dollars over the credit is when the IRS will give extra special attention. (There has been one person who has claimed $30,000 in credits for this. Many tax protesters have claimed credits to the level of the entire tax liability.)
 

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