The Telephone Tax Refund: Take It, but Tread Lightly (unless you have the receipts)

To ensure that tax preparers do not abuse the telephone tax credit, IRS Revenue Agents and [Criminal] Special Agents have taken the unusual step of visiting 22 tax preparers. The IRS has a table of standard credits ($30-60) which it believes will apply to most taxpayers for the March 2003--July 2006 period in question. You can claim more, but you best be prepared to document the additional amounts. Very large claims (some have claimed in excess of $10,000) probably will have any refund frozen and increase the likelihood on an audit. While all this is going on, the IRS is also announcing the credit after one-third of early filers overlooked the credit.

Obviously, a lot of confusion going on here. If you do your return by hand or by tax software, double-check to make sure that you took the credit (the tax relates to long-distance service). One final question--wonder how the IRS agents sent to the tax preparers were received?