WASHINGTON — This year's top tax scam involves people who try to take inflated refunds for the one-time telephone excise tax refund, according to an IRS analysis of early tax returns released last week.

The agency's "dirty dozen" list of top tax-filing scams for 2006 returns also includes one that victimizes American Indians.

The American Indian Employment Credit is legally available only to employers who hire Native Americans, but some scam artists are telling individuals they can take it as a personal tax credit.

"Whether it's done on a reservation or it's done elsewhere, it targets Native Americans," IRS spokesman John Lipold said Tuesday.

"Several years ago, there was one targeting African Americans." That scam urged blacks to claim a bogus tax credit as federal reparations for slavery.

Attempts to claim the reparations tax credit, as it was known, have dropped dramatically because of publicity, and the IRS hopes that also happens when American Indians find out they can only claim an employment credit for employees they hire.

The phone excise tax refund — this year's No. 1 scam problem — also is a legitimate write-off, but being abused by some.

Most tax filers are using an IRS table that allows them to claim a refund ranging from $30 to $60 depending on their number of personal exemptions.

Some taxpayers who make frequent long-distance calls may decide to claim a larger refund by searching through old bills to calculate how much they paid in excise taxes between March 2003 and July 2006, the period covered by the refund.

That's fine with the IRS, which has created a special form for listing those charges.

But some tax returns are setting off alarm bells at the IRS.

One person in California claimed a $140,604 refund for phone service while reporting annual wages of only $8,145, according to the IRS. That return was among seven submitted by one tax preparer who claimed phone tax refunds larger than the annual income of the individuals.

A tax preparer in Baton Rouge, La., submitted 147 electronic returns claiming an average phone tax refund of $3,842. That translates to an average of $128,066 in long-distance bills per person. The average income reported on the tax returns was only $14,148.