Get Your One-Time Phone-Tax Refund

Editor's note: As a special feature for March, TheStreet.com offers an ongoing series on everything you need to know about taxes. Today is part nine.

The IRS is giving you a one-time offer of free money. Seriously. All you need to do to qualify is pay your taxes and have owned a phone.

The Telephone Excise Tax Refund is a refund of the 3% federal excise tax you paid for your phone's long-distance service from Feb. 28, 2003, to Aug. 1, 2006. The refund is available to anyone who paid such taxes on landline, wireless or voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) service, and as I mentioned, is good for this year only. ...