About 28 percent of Hawai'i residents filing federal returns are missing out on a one-time refund that puts $30 or more in their pockets.

The Internal Revenue Service said early filings show 22,854 returns from Hawai'i didn't request the telephone excise tax refund. They missed out on at least $686,000 they could have received, the tax agency said.

The refund is only being offered this year and stems from federal court decisions on an excise tax that previously was charged on long-distance telephone service. The IRS is making a one-time refund of the federal excise tax collected on service billed between March 2003 and July 2006.

People can claim the refund by tallying how much they paid on old bills. Or go the simpler route of taking the standard refund amount, which ranges from $30 to $60 depending on the number of exemptions they have.

Hawai'i taxpayers are doing marginally better than the national average. About 30 percent of everybody filing returns so far has failed to claim the refund. The IRS said that of those, almost half were done by a tax preparer.