Sticking It to the Man

Want $30?  Read on…

Well, someone requested recently that I stop putting up financial advice entries because they’re boring, but this is more than that.  Consider this more of a public service announcement for you and a way to help me thumb my nose at the establishment… in particular, the IRS.

So to those of you who can’t sit through the entire entry of boring finance stuff… I’ll keep it simple:

If you are filing 1040EZ: 

1. Go to line 9 and write $30.
2. Do the rest of your taxes
3. Thank me, and buy me lunch with the $30 you just saved.

If you are filing 1040:

1. Go to line 71 and write $30
2. Do the rest of your taxes
3. Thank me, and buy me dinner with the $30 you just saved.  (hey, if you’re filing 1040, it must mean you have lots of deductions and can afford to pay for dinner instead of lunch)

If the IRS offered you $30 right now, would you take it?  Well, according to this article, so far this tax season more than 1/4 of all the people who were eligible to do just that didn’t do so… that’s about 10 million people.  And more than likely, everyone reading this entry who had long distance service between 2003 and 2006 is eligible.  If you didn’t, then take out your erasers… sorry. 

The reason for this is because for those years most people were still paying an outdated tax on their phone bills that was based on the distance of your phone calls.  If you look at your phone bill, this showed up as excise tax.  But the long distance companies stopped calculating the distance of your calls, for the most part, starting in 2003 and just charged flat rates… but the tax was still being charged to you.  So this is Uncle Sam’s way of saying… OOPS!

But here’s the catch… this is the ONLY year you can claim it.  If you miss it, tough jerky.  It’s funny that many people don’t even know about it… I guess if you owed America between 3 to 4 billion dollars, you’d want to keep it as hush hush as possible too.  I also like how they tell you to “Attach form 8913 if required” on there to make people think it’s a hassle.  You only have to fill that out if you want to claim the actual amount that you paid (which could be more than $30) over that span, but how many people keep phone bills from 4 years ago… (well, ummm… I guess I do… hehe).  But you can put $30 if you just want the standard amount.

The reason I’m making a big deal out of this is because this hits one of my pet peeves right on the head – how people or organizations take advantage of others’ ignorance about something for their own gain.  This is actually a running theme in this blog, and I write about it periodically.

So, enjoy your $30.  You earned it… and don’t spend it all in one place.