Refund of Telephone Tax

First let's do it the easy way:
$30 + $10 for each additional exemption up to a maximum of $ 60.
Filing single would be $ 30 Married filing jointly with no other dependents =$40
MFJ with two children = $60 maximum

Comment: Only the tax on long distance calls is to be refunded
Now let's do it the hard way:
(this is my interpretation, but it's pretty confusing and I could be wrong)
I'll use an example to illustrate:
Telephone tax on April 2006 (which includes long-dist. tax) $60 = 100%
Tel. tax on Sept 206 bill (which is without the telephone tax) $59 = 98.33%
Subtract Sept % from the April % 1.67%

Add all telephone bills from March 2003 thru July 2006 $1500.00
Multiply by the above percent (not to exceed 2%) $ 25.05
The maximum would have been $30 if the 1.67% had been 2%

My suggestion:
look at a couple of telephone bills to see if your long-distance calls are enough to justify doing it the hard way. If it takes an hour to calculate it and you come up with a bigger figure it isn't worth it. Also how much good is the deduction? A $60 deduction is only worth $6 if you are in the 10% bracket and $ 21 if you are in the 35% bracket.