If a well-to-do person walked up to most people on the street and tried to hand them $30 with no strings attached, they'd take it.

Yet, the Internal Revenue Service is having trouble giving away at least that much money, if not more, on most tax returns, and it's not sure why, said Bill Brunson, IRS spokesman.

The telephone excise tax refund is a one-time refund for anyone who paid for long-distance calls between Feb. 28, 2003 and Aug. 1, 2006.

In Arizona, of the approximately 809,000 returns processed in the first half of the tax season, about 264,000 neglected to request the refund, Brunson said.

"We're literally trying to give money away on the telephone excise tax refund and we're missing out on one out of three Arizonans," he said.

More precisely, 32.68 percent of Arizonans haven't requested it, which is pretty much in line with what other states are seeing as well: The numbers range from 30 percent to 34 percent of filers across the country who aren't taking the telephone excise tax refund, Brunson said.

All filers need to do to claim the refund is complete one additional line on their tax return, if they are taking the standard refund.

The tax was originally implemented in 1898 to fund the Spanish-American War.

The government needed money and decided that long-distance telephone calls were a luxury, so it slapped a tax on such calls to help pay for the war. The war ended and the tax remained for more than 100 years.

"If you had a telephone in your home and made long distance calls, you would have been assessed an excise tax of 3 percent on those long distance calls," Brunson said.

The government stopped collecting the long-distance excise tax last August after several federal court decisions determined the tax doesn't apply to long-distance service as it is billed today.

Federal officials authorized a one-time refund of the tax collected on service billed during the previous 41 months, dating back to February 2003.

The refund is easy to claim, even for people who don't keep records going back that long, Brunson said.

Standard refund amounts have been set by the IRS depending on how many exemptions a person takes.

A person claiming a single exemption can claim a $30 refund, while someone taking two exemptions can claim $40. With three exemptions it increases to $50, and the maximum refund is $60 for people who claim four or more exemptions.

Multiply the minimal amount, $30, and multiply it by the number of Arizonans who haven't requested the refund, and it's about $7.9 million that the IRS can't unload, Brunson said.

"We're baffled," he said.

People who made a lot of long-distance calls might prefer to claim the actual tax amount by adding up the taxes from the 41-month period designated for the refund, Brunson said.

"If you did not keep those sorts of records yourself, you would have to go to your service provider and request that record from them, and then do the addition yourself."

To claim the refund in this scenario, filers need to complete Form 8913 — available at irs.gov — and attach it to their tax return.

Qwest Communications offers those records through its Web site for a $10 fee added to your next phone bill, said Jeff Mirasola, Qwest spokesman.