| Our Method Best Practice - Managed by professionals meeting the highest standards of excellence. Effective - InspecTel's method has been approved by the IRS in all cases filed; we recapture 100% of Federal Excise Tax on telecommunications charged your company. Maximizes Your Refund - We secure Federal Excise Tax refunds on all "qualifying" Telephonic Services (billed and paid by your company). As a benchmark, you are entitled to a refund that approximates 10% of your company's total one-year telecommunication expense. Streamlined Process - Our method minimizes the amount of work your company needs to perform. Risk Free - Our compensation is contingent solely on results. You incur no upfront costs. Our fee is paid to us after you receive your refund from the IRS.
Based on best-practice standards in accounting and auditing, our process for the recovery of Federal Excise Taxes on Telephony Communications includes: Performance of an audit of all telephony vendors used by your corporation. We document the excise taxes you were assessed and paid, and calculate the telecommunication excise tax refund you are owed. (Your refund should equal a minimum of 10% of your company's one-year total telecommunication expense.)
Preparation of applicable, project-specific, tax filings as required by the IRS.
Management of administrative procedures, meetings, and correspondence with the IRS. Completion of project through refund receipt and IRS closing letter.
Your Entitled Refund How Much of a Refund is Due: Your eligible refund is the 3 percent (3%) federal telecommunications excise tax your Company has paid from March 1, 2003 through July 31, 2006, plus interest, on charges for telephony services, including: long distance, bundled services, voice mail, conference calling, pagers, WAN, LAN, 800 numbers, company wireless (cellular) phone usage, VOIP, and other qualifying telephony and communication software systems expense. If you have not filed for your telecommunications excise tax refund, the statute of limitations is fast approaching. If your company already took the 1% Safe Harbor approach and received a refund, you are due a significant incremental Federal Telephone Excise Tax refund. In the case where you may have received a refund using the IRS Actual Expense Method, we expect you are entitled to a larger refund; this is primarily due to the complexity of undertaking the Actual Expense Method, which often led to significant omissions and errors in calculation.
IRS’s Process Summary The IRS and Treasury admit that the process required for securing federal telecom excise tax refunds was overly complex. In late 2008 the Treasury issued a preliminary report on why companies have left a vast amount of entitled refunds on the table. (Click on the Treasury Inspector General Report link to the right to read the full report.) IRS's Overly-complex Actual Expense Method (Note: This method required a full review, invoice by invoice, of 41 months of records.) Per the IRS, via the Actual Expense Method, "...an eligible entity may determine the amount of its telecommunication excise tax refund by examining its books and records for total telephone expenses, including, for example, its general ledger, check register, and canceled checks. Total telephone expenses means all amounts paid to every telecommunications provider used by the eligible entity for telephone services that were billed after February 28, 2003 and before August 1, 2006." IRS's Undervalued 1% Safe Harbor Estimation Method Per the IRS, under Notice 2007-11 "...businesses and tax-exempt organizations may figure their refund amounts by using the 1% Safe Harbor Estimation Method instead of claiming a refund for actual amounts paid." In summary, the Safe Harbor method involves comparing two telephone bills to determine the percentage of telephone expenses attributable to the long-distance excise tax. (Please note that if you filed using the 1% Safe Harbor Estimation Method allowed by the IRS, this method significantly undervalues the amount of your entitled refund. Our experience is the actual refund will be more than two and half times the Safe Harbor amount.)
Contact us at (617) 686-1981, or send us an email, for more information and a confidential review of your refund entitlement:
Circular 230 Disclosure If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. | | Federal Excise Tax Synopsis
Case Law May 25, 2006 - IRS loses the battle. Federal cases in the Second, Third, Sixth, Seventh, and District of Columbia circuits, all of which were decided against the government, held that a telephonic communication for which there is a toll charge varying due to elapsed transmission time and not distance is not a taxable toll telephone service as defined in code Section 4252(b)(1). Notice 2006-50, 2006-25 IRB June 19, 2006 - IRS formally concedes. Accordingly, the government will no longer litigate this issue and Notice 2005-79, 2005-46 I.R.B. 952, which states otherwise, is revoked. The Commissioner agrees to credit or refund the amounts paid for nontaxable service Notice 2007-11, 2007-5 IRB January 29, 2007 - This notice amplifies, clarifies, and modifies Notice 2006-50, 2006-25 IRB. Treasury Inspector General Report April 24, 2008 - IRS cites reasons for low refunds claimed by corporations; (1) businesses believed the amount of work and associated fees outweighed the amount of the credit they would receive, (2) businesses were concerned that they would be unable to provide the necessary records needed to support the amount of the claim, and (3) businesses simply were not aware of the credit. Treasury Inspector General Report September 17, 2008 - Yet another report by the Treasury presenting reasons why business taxpayers did not claim the Telephone Excise Tax Refund (TETR), even though they appeared to qualify for it.
Statute of Limitations Internal Revenue Code Sec. 6511.- Limitations on credit or refund. (a) Period of limitation on filing claims for credit or refund of an overpayment of any tax imposed by this title in respect of which tax the taxpayer is required to file a return shall be filed by the taxpayer within 3 years from the time the return was filed. Forms Form 8913 Credit for Federal Telephone Excise Tax Paid Form 8913 Instructions
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