[en] We address the problem of including Coulomb distortion effects in inclusive quasielastic (e,e') reactions using an improved version of the effective momentum approximation. Arguments are given that a simple modification of the effective momentum approximation, which is no longer applicable in its original form in the case of highly charged nuclei, leads to very good results. A comparison of the improved effective momentum method with exact calculations is given. A critical remark concerns recent experiments with inclusive quasielastic positron scattering. (authors)