USPS postmark delays could impact taxes, bills and deadlines
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Depending on where you live, relying on a postmark to prove you mailed your tax return, mail-in ballot, bill payment, or any other time-sensitive document by a certain date may no longer work as you expect.
As the U.S. Postal Service continues to implement operational changes to shore up its finances and modernize its infrastructure, the agency expects an increase in delays between when you mail something and when it’s postmarked. Public notice in the Federal Register It came into force on December 24. The postmark indicates the date your mail was processed and has historically been applied the day you mail an item.
However, because pickups are limited at many postal points and mail now travels further afield to regional processing centers where postmarking is typically applied, “the postmark date does not inherently or necessarily align with the date on which the Postal Service first acknowledges ownership of the piece of mail,” the notice said.
While households increasingly use digital options to file taxes, pay bills, and conduct other personal business, there are still people who use the Postal Service for time-sensitive mail.
Of the 163.6 million tax returns received by the IRS this year, nearly 10 million were not filed electronically, according to the agency’s latest data. About 29% of voters sent their ballots by mail last year, according to USAFacts. 13 percent of households paid their bills by mail last year. Postal Service’s 2024 Household Diary Study.
“Consumers have always assumed that the post office will stamp their mail or put it in a box the same day they take it to the post office,” said Edgar Dworsky, a former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts who focuses on consumer protection and founder of the advocacy site Consumer World. “Who would have expected it to be a few days before there was a postmark on it?”
Mail travels further to processing facilities
While the Postal Service stated in its announcement that it was not changing the way postmarking is done (which has always been done in its own processing facilities), the agency added new language to its Domestic Postal Guide to clarify to the public when postmarks are applied.
In 2021, USPS announced an initiative called: Delivery to America improving its finances, including increasing postal rates and redesigning its network and processing operations.
Changes to transportation schedules and the consolidation of processing facilities under this initiative mean that many post offices that previously sent mail to a hub twice a day now do so only once in the morning. New research from Brookings Institution. Under the new network, approximately 26 percent of post offices are located within 50 miles of their assigned regional center, with another 26 percent located between 150 and 500 miles away, according to the study.
As a result, some mail often does not start moving through the system until at least the next day, resulting in the postmark not being applied the day you mail that item. In some cases, i.e. before weekends or holidays, it may take more than a day for this important stamp to be applied.
How to meet mail delivery deadlines due to postmark delays?
The importance of ensuring your mail is postmarked on time applies to a variety of documents or forms with a deadline. For example, mail-in ballots, as well as federal and state tax returns and certain legal documents, may require a postmark from a specific date to be counted.
If someone wanted to make sure “the postmark lines up with the mailing date,” the customer could take the mail to a post office, station, or branch and request an endorsement. [manual postmark] at the retail counter,” according to a statement released by the Postal Service.
It costs nothing to ask a postal clerk to manually stamp something. Or you can pay $5.30 to send a time-sensitive document. registered mailIt includes a sender’s receipt as well as a return receipt showing when it was delivered and who signed it. Alternatively a postal certificateIt’s $2.40 that you keep for your records and represents the date you mailed something.
“Waiting in line at the post office is never fun, but you get proof that the mail was sent on time,” said Josh Youngblood, registered agent and founder of The Youngblood Group in Dallas. “The reality is, otherwise you’re at the mercy of that postmark every time it’s applied.”
Given the potential for delays, you may want to explore electronic filing or payment options when possible. Or give yourself a deadline to mail something important well before the official delivery date.
Considerations for mailing tax returns
It is useful to take into account the possible delay before the tax return filing period. Although April 15 is the date by which federal taxes are due, the IRS considers any tax return postmarked on or before April 15 to be timely filed, even if it is not received until days later.
So if you tend to wait until the last minute to file your taxes and don’t do so electronically, you can’t assume that dropping your return off at the post office or putting it in the mailbox means it will be postmarked that day.
“If I’m mailing something to the IRS, I’ll go to the post office and go to the actual person and they’ll stamp it,” Youngblood said.
If your tax return is mailed late and you owe taxes, you may face penalties and interest. “There is one late application penaltyand even if it’s a day late, it’s still late,” Youngblood said.
For individual tax returns (i.e., your Form 1040), the penalty for filing late is 5% of the tax due for each month or partial month the return is late, capped at 25%. Moreover, the penalty for late payment is 0.5% of your monthly outstanding balance, which is limited to 25%. Unpaid balances also accrue daily interest at the federal short-term rate plus 3%.
However, if you have filed and paid the taxes you owe on time in the past three years, you can request the penalties be waived, Youngblood said.
