Refund on 107 year old cell phone tax |
No, this isn’t humor. Apparently one of the numerous taxes on our cell phone bills here in the states, which I complained about a couple years ago on this blog — the Federal Excise Tax — actually originates from the Spanish-American War some 107 years ago:
This tax, imposed by President William McKinley in 1898 to help fund the Spanish American War, was originally a luxury tax, at a time when only wealthy Americans had phones. The war lasted only four months, but the “Tax on Talk” is still around more than 100 years later. Today, every person who makes a phone call pays 3% on every monthly phone bill for this outdated tax.
Cell phone companies would like this repealed but the IRS needs to tell them to stop collecting the tax, which they haven’t yet done, writes newsnet5.com:
According to the Web site www.mywireless.org, you can ask the IRS for a refund of up to three years of past taxes. You can also contact members of Congress to ask them to repeal the tax altogether.
We’re going to check into this and see if we can get any money back for this utterly pointless tax. Some of taxes sure seem like a one way door. Just how often do we hear about taxes being repealed and/or decreased?
The refund claim form required is available via the following PDF file which mywireless.org describes: “The process is lengthy and confusing, not to mention time-consuming.” Apparently a form is required to be filled out for each calendar quarter that the bogus 107 year old Federal Excise tax was paid. Why am I not surprised that the refund process isn’t simple? Red tape alert!
Anybody else tried getting their money back on this one yet? Let me know how it goes for you. My wife is on the case for us.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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I heard that the cell phone tax was deemed illegal and that if we fill
out a form, we could get that tax back from the Fed government.
Do you know where to get these forms?
Comment by Shannon Plowman — February 17, 2006 @ 10:14 am PST
At www.irs.gov you will find, under “forms and publications,” Form 8849 and Schedule 6 to that Form.
Comment by Tom — February 19, 2006 @ 12:38 am PST
I have not been paying the FET since 1998 when I took Sprint to court. The whole story can be seen on atgpress.com, under court cases of importance. Of course I lost at every avenue because I was telling them they had to refund to me all the way back to 1965 when the tax was declared repealed. The resanon I lost was due to the fact EVERY phone company would have to refund to everyone and att CEO persomnelly told me it would bankrupt every company so they got the corrupt courts to dismiss without any reason. Oh yes they can do anything they want as there is no law that says they have to do what is right. There is no form to fill out. If you want more info , you have my e mail
Comment by Albert Coombs — May 25, 2006 @ 4:07 pm PST
[…] In the past I’ve complained about telcos, starting way back to the second month of this site in August 2003 continuing on to January of this year when I posted about the 107 year old tax the feds insisted on collecting. It’s my understanding that on this year’s taxes (2007 reporting) we’ll be able to write off some of these past Federal Excise Taxes (source: tmcnet), so start collecting your old wireless phone bills. […]
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