Seldom does one federal agency save money at another’s expense. But that’s how it’s looking more than a year after the Internal Revenue Service opted to stop delivering millions of income tax forms by mail.
The IRS announced the decision in September 2010 as part of a push to economize on its annual printing and postage budget. As of this past August, the savings on postage costs just from not mailing Form 1040 packages amounted to about $4.1 million, according to a recent report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. That was money lost to the U.S. Postal Service, which is in financial crisis driven partly by the shift to e-mail and electronic commerce.
The Postal Service recouped about half of that amount because the IRS used postcards to notify taxpayers of the change. But as the report notes, that was a one-time expense. And the report doesn’t attempt to quantify what the Postal Service will lose from the additional taxpayers who go with the IRS’ advice to “e-file” their annual returns.
8 Comments
This isn’t the first time a federal group has done this. Food stamps, social security checks and college tuition checks all went that way or are in the process of doing so. As mentioned, some of it is re-couped as the people get a credit card replacing the paper checks, but a one-time thing only. Every agency is trying to cut down and it is understandable. Now the USPS has to figure out ways to make its own cuts.
The IRS will mail you any publications/forms if you go on their website and order them. ( of no cost to you ) Whether you use them or not, keep the USPS in business by forcing them to mail them out.
We will be a country with 30% unemployment in the next 4 years….the computer will DESTROY this nation.nobody’s job will be safe.. well over a million Americans jobs,not just postal employees, depend on the mailing industry!!! But no one cares?? If every person uses the computer to pay bills send birthday cards etc…..this country will fall apart!!!!!!!!!!
Wouldn’t this technically save the Postal Service money since their cost of delivering is more than what they are being paid for there service.
The government should just close the postal service so that everyone moves to more modern forms of communication. With all the money saved (billions) the government could invest in creating meaningful jobs for the 21st century rather than trying to protect jobs of the 19th century.
It is always prudent to save money. To spend money on a unnecessary activity just to support an outdated business is bad for the economy as a whole.
USPS has cut the labor that moves the mail and services the customers to the bone already. When are they going to start on the cube rats and management; that’s where the waste is at.
Even the banks admit that paying bills online is unsafe and is prone to identity theft! By the way, people complain about buying a book of stamps when it’s the smallest thing on their budget! Those same people will buy a big screen TV, pay by credit card, make the minimum payment and end up paying $2000 for the TV! But they can’t spend $9.00 on a book of stamps!