Get Your One-Time Phone-Tax Refund

There are two ways you can claim this refund. The easiest way is to claim the "standard amount," which is based on your tax exemptions. So if you have one exemption, your refund would be $30, two exemptions, $40, and so on up to $60. You would report your refund on line 71 of your Form 1040 -- Individual Income Tax Return.

The other option is to calculate the refund yourself. To do that you would have to go find all your phone bills from that period and tally the actual amount of taxes paid based upon your telephone records. You would then have to file Form 8913 -- Credit for Federal Telephone Excise Tax Paid -- and attach it to your tax return.

The IRS actually believes most people will be better off just taking the standard deduction than slogging through their phone bills, says Mark Luscombe, a principal federal tax analyst with CCH, a provider of tax and business law information.

That's probably because people already are calculating the refund incorrectly. The IRS has found that some early tax-filers are trying to request a refund of the entire amount of their phone bills rather than just the tax. And some very brazen individuals have filed their returns with refunds that exceed their actual income.

So be sure to check the IRS Web site for more info, and do it right. Otherwise, you're just opening yourself up to an audit and I, for one, would rather eat dirt than deal with that.

Next in the tax series: Don't Blow Your Refund Before You Get It

TheStreet.com tax series previously featured:

• Don't Fear the Auditor
• A Reason to Procrastinate
• Booyah Breakdown: Taxes for Traders
• Don't You Miss a Tax Credit or Deduction
• Booyah Breakdown: Taxes for Traders
• How to Choose the Right Tax Software
• AMT:Little Tax Of Horrors
• Last Chance to File for Refunds -- for 2003
• Booyah Breakdown: Taxes for Traders II