One of the Last Things to Worry About

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is the only delivery service that handles cremated remains "as others refuse to transport what is considered hazardous material." However, it loses track of many deliveries.

A 2023 USPS inspector-general report noted 452 undelivered cremated-remains packages at its mail-recovery center in Atlanta. The Postal Service is the only shipper that handles cremated remains, as others refuse to transport what is considered hazardous material. The inspector general concluded the Postal Service needed to improve its internal tracking system.

These shipments are insurable, yet cash settlements for families often do not make up for the loss of a loved one's remains.

With many Americans having dwelled in several locales throughout their lives, there is a high probability that there would be more of these shipments, as they would like their ashes to be transferred from the place where they died to, for example, the place where other family members are buried. (Such will likely be true in my case.)

Your humble blogger is reluctant to propose additional regulation, but perhaps government intervention is necessary to, say, indemnify the competition so that they can provide alternatives to the USPS.

Obsessed by a Pittance

One of my New Year's goals (it's an aspiration, not a resolution) was to write letters regularly.

I've been averaging five letters per week, which requires frequent stamp purchases. It's a personal predilection, but I prefer to pay full price for a first-class stamp, currently 68¢, and pick out the images that I like. (One can buy slightly discounted stamps in bulk at stamps.com or big box stores.)

Yesterday I bought eighty stamps (picture) but didn't bother putting them in an envelope.

The smallest plate block was missing when I took inventory. Retracing my steps, I searched the car several times. After 20 minutes, I gave up, rationalizing that what was lost was only $13.60 (20 x 68¢), nothing in the scheme of things.

The next morning the first thing I did was search the car again. Et voilà! The manatee block was at the bottom of the driver-side storage compartment. I felt a brief moment of elation, then sobered immediately.

This chronicle of events was not about commitment, writing letters, buying stamps, or money.

I had been obsessed by a pittance, and I need to fix that.

Paper is Safer

Our paper pile in 2016. A cost we're willing to accept.

We have always filed paper income tax returns. It's a procedure that has worked for us for over 50 years, and it's much easier to prove something to the IRS with a physical document, for example a post office receipt, than with an image that can be easily doctored. From 2012:

I'm old-fashioned: I prefer mailing a paper version of our tax return. There's a solidity to the accomplishment, and its heft conveys a sense of the work involved. (I also confess to a streak of rebelliousness: electronic filing is for the IRS' convenience, not ours, no matter what they say about getting our refund a few days sooner..)

I always feel disquieted when sending sensitive information electronically. E-mailed documents or those transmitted via "secure portals" are much easier for a crook to intercept than a mailed envelope. From 2023:

We are old-school and communicate on paper whenever possible when doing business with the government. Electronic documents, emails, and payments get misdirected often enough that we are comfortable using tried and true, albeit slower methods.

(Most taxpayers who use professional help don't have the option of filing on paper. Paid preparers of 11 or more tax returns must file their clients' returns electronically. We prepare our own taxes and still do 4 or 5 paper returns for friends and family.)

It turns out that there were good reasons for our feelings of distrust. E-filing has resulted in some taxpayers getting screwed (a technical tax term): [bold added]

The problems with e-filing aren’t widely known, even by tax professionals. Paper is more secure, as demonstrated by recent malware attacks on e-filing tax software and preparation companies such as Wolters Kluwer, and by data breaches involving taxpayers’ personal information such as with the company TaxSlayer. E-filing income-tax returns can also lead to unfair treatment by the IRS.

The IRS accepts returns that are e-filed or paper returns deposited in the mail by the filing deadline. If a return has enough information for the IRS to calculate the proper tax, it is considered valid. But such protections don’t fully apply to electronic returns. Authorizing your preparer to e-file on your behalf doesn’t protect you as a taxpayer, because the IRS doesn’t consider an electronic return until it acknowledges receipt.

In recent years, courts have upheld harsh financial penalties for taxpayers who thought they had properly e-filed. Christopher Haynes’s certified public accountant e-filed his 2010 return before the deadline in 2011. The IRS rejected the return on a triviality: A Social Security number was entered on a line designated for an employer identification number. Mr. Haynes didn’t know this until he received a penalty notice from the IRS in August 2012. A district court upheld the penalty, ruling in a summary judgment in the government’s favor that Mr. Haynes’s reliance on his CPA to e-file didn’t constitute reasonable cause to abate the penalty. An appellate court later vacated the decision, and the final outcome isn’t yet clear. (Mr. Haynes didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

Wayne Lee’s CPA failed to e-file his client’s returns for 2014, 2015 and 2016. The accountant told the IRS that the software he used couldn’t handle Mr. Lee’s complex returns. But Mr. Lee said the accountant never told him about this problem. In 2019 the IRS assessed Mr. Lee more than $70,000 in penalties and barred him from applying his six-figure 2014 overpayment to taxes owed in 2015 and 2016. An appellate court ruled that reliance on his CPA wasn’t an excuse for making errors. The court noted that taxpayers can confirm timely filing with the IRS by phone or on the IRS website. Alternatively, instead of e-filing, the preparer can attach Form 8948 (Explanation for Not E-filing) to Form 1040 and file a paper return instead.

When a dispute can’t be resolved within the IRS, a taxpayer can petition the Tax Court—either by mail or by e-filing—seeking a favorable outcome. E-filing a petition with the Tax Court, however, also is risky. Antawn Sanders said he encountered technical problems while trying to e-file a Tax Court petition and spent almost an hour trying to submit it before the midnight filing deadline. The document ultimately uploaded 11 seconds into the next day. The court rejected it as late.

Roy Nutt e-filed his Tax Court petition on the day it was due at 11:05 p.m. Central Time. That meant it arrived at 12:05 a.m., the next day, in Washington, where the Tax Court is located. The court rejected the filing because it was five minutes late. An appeal is pending. Had Mr. Nutt mailed a hard copy to the Tax Court postmarked before midnight, it would have been accepted.

The security risks posed by e-filing are equally serious. The IRS works with a third-party vendor, ID.me, to verify taxpayers’ identities. Registering with ID.me is a prerequisite to obtaining an IRS online account or using the new IRS Direct File tax program. Taxpayers must submit copies of their Social Security cards or employer identification numbers and other documents to ID.me as proof of identity. I advise my clients not to use ID.me because it is a private database of personal information. My clients have no control over it and must trust that it won’t be hacked.

E-filing is widely used and isn’t always voluntary. The IRS mandates e-filing of certain forms for every tax-exempt organization, preparers who file 11 or more returns, and for any business filing 10 or more returns; each W-2, 1099, and payroll return counts toward the 10.

E-filing has also spurred tax forms to proliferate, making it more complex and costly for taxpayers to file returns. For example, Form 1040, which before 2018 was two pages long, now runs as long as eight pages.

Considering that e-filing isn’t as forgiving as paper filing and raises other risks, paper returns seem the safest bet. Unlike e-filed returns, paper ones won’t get rejected for failure to click on a box. You might even get away with missing a deadline by mailing a day late—though I wouldn’t 'recommend cutting it close.

We operate under a general rule regarding government agencies and large companies: if they want you to change your ways and you don't see what you get out of it, you can be assured that the benefit to them is great and that there are risks that they are keeping hidden from you.

We'll file on paper until they force us to do otherwise.

In the New Year I'll Be Writing More Letters

I don't care for the mask representations of animals,
which I suppose we're stuck with for 12 years.

Yesterday afternoon the line at the local Post Office was out the door, so I tried again this morning.

At 9:30 there were no customers at all; yes, it's good to be retired, as one can come and go as one pleases.

I told the postal worker I wanted three sheets of Year-of-the-Dragon stamps.

"Anything else?"

Three Global Forever stamps. I had a few late Christmas cards to send to Asia.

She began ringing up three sheets of ten international stamps, which cost $1.55 each.

Stop, stop, just one.

In the New Year I guess I'll be writing more letters to Hong Kong, Japan, and Europe.

Not Tending to Basics

Check 5378 for $320 mailed on 8/5, bank account not cleared as of 8/21

The license and registration fees were due by August 22nd so I mailed the check to the DMV's Sacramento post office box two weeks early.

I do pay bills electronically, but for payments that have tax consequences (part of the license renewal is personal-property tax, which may be deductible on Schedule A) I like to write an old-fashioned check. It's nice to have a copy of the cancelled check to show the IRS in the event of an audit.

Aware of the security risk from dropping off a letter at a mailbox, I mailed the DMV payment from the Foster City Post Office on August 5th.

On August 21st I checked the bank account online. The check still had not cleared the bank.

The problem lay with the DMV cash receipts system or the U.S. Postal delivery system, but it wouldn't be wise to invite a late-payment penalty and try to appeal it. So I paid the fee on 8/21 directly using a Discover credit card.

Sure enough, California and the USPS didn't lose the check. It was deposited on August 31st (above) and I have a credit balance that I hope will get back in a month or so.

People disagree about many aspects of government, but the vast majority, I suspect, want government systems to work quickly, effectively, and honestly. An accurate cash receipts system is basic to organizations, and the structural principles were known decades before electronic data processing (EDP) was ubiquitous.

I worry about a California government that's always working on the next big thing and not tending to basics, like handling checks or verifying unemployment claims (EDD fraud is $32 billion). No one pays the penalty for the systems falling apart, and no one gets promoted for tending to them.

What's in a Phrase: "Undue Hardship"

Gerald Groff (WSJ photo)

Given the controversies surrounding recent Supreme Court decisions on free speech, affirmative action, and student-loan forgiveness, it's easy to overlook their unanimous statement on a religious accommodations case.

The 9-0 decision in Groff v. DeJoy is likely to affect thousands of workers and their employers. The facts:

[Gerald] Groff began working at the U.S. Postal Service in 2012, delivering mail in rural parts of Lancaster County, Pa. In 2013, the Postal Service contracted with Amazon.com to deliver Amazon packages, including on Sundays.

Groff eventually transferred to a small Postal Service facility in Holtwood, Pa., to avoid Sunday work. But in March 2017, the Holtwood facility also began Amazon Sunday delivery service.

His supervisor attempted to find other carriers to cover his Sunday shifts, saying that such shift swaps were the only accommodations that wouldn’t affect operations.

Groff never agreed to work on a Sunday. He received warnings, suspensions and other sorts of discipline short of termination for declining Sunday shifts assigned to him. The Postal Service said that these disciplinary actions were corrective rather than punitive, and that his pay was never docked.

In 2019, Groff resigned, saying he had no choice but to quit, and sued the Postal Service for failing to reasonably accommodate his religious practice.

The lower courts referred to the statute and a 1977 case, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, to reject the lawsuit. They said that his employer, the USPS, didn't have to reschedule Mr. Groff because it would incur more than a de minimis cost.

The Supreme Court said that interpretation of Hardison was wrong, that "undue hardship" for the employer means that the USPS had "substantial increased costs", not just something above the minimum. To be clear, the Court did not say Mr. Groff was correct but told the lower courts to apply the substantial-burden criterion to his case.

While applauding Gerald Groff for standing up for his beliefs, I also sympathize with the employer, who in the end may well end up proving that it experienced substantial increased costs ("Groff was hired as a part-time, flexible carrier at a four-person post office, and he refused to show up for 24 Sundays of work.”)

I can also see many employers being bombarded with claims that employees can't work Sundays or other Holy Days because of their religion. Not all of these claims will be from true believers, and companies may well conclude that it is better to give in than risk a bigger loss in court.

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away

A rare day when the postman opened his umbrella

It rained last month on Election Day, and a colder, wetter storm is hitting the Bay Area today:

the combination of strong winds and the risk for flooding will make for a hazardous morning for commuters across the Bay Area. Thankfully, the winter storm will quickly exit the Bay Area this afternoon, and both winds and rain will completely clear out by sunset.

Just be sure to crank up your heater tonight. This storm will leave behind bitterly cold air across Northern California that will settle over the valleys and basins of the state. The National Weather Service has issued a freeze watch from Thursday night to Friday morning for the North Bay valleys, where temperatures will likely drop down to the upper 20s...

North Bay: A deluge will set up over Sonoma, Napa, Marin and Solano counties this morning as widespread showers clog up rural roadways with rain and tree limbs. The Petaluma and Napa valleys can expect strong 30 to 40 mph gusts as the winter storm roars into the region. Pockets of valleys closer to Guerneville and Healdsburg are likely to see ponding and urban flooding as the strongest showers roll in between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m.

It's a triple-win: 1) the sprinklers have been turned off, saving on our water bill (over $200 per month, half of which is fixed sewer cost); 2) the augmentation of the Sierra snowpack reduces the odds of water rationing next summer; 3) I had some outdoor chores to do, and now I have an excuse not to do them.

IRS: It Can't Even Get the Basics Right

Any notice received from the IRS is upsetting, and this one was no exception. Form CP80, received last week, said that our account had a $2,378 credit and that our 2020 income tax return had not been filed.

We had mailed the return timely on April 14, 2021, along with a check for $2,378 and Form 1040-V, the payment voucher.

Everything was in the same envelope. Obviously they cashed the check and knew it was ours. How could the return have been "lost"?

The above question is sarcastic, dear reader. My mother's 2019 and 2020 tax refunds still have not been received, and getting through to talk to a live person who knows what he or she is doing is impossible.

Tracking info to Cincinnati

And I was certainly not going to accede to the CP80 request to send them another copy with a 2022 signature date. It would go to Philadelphia while the original had gone to Cincinnati. They might think the copy was an Amended Return and accuse me of not filling out a 1040-X.

So I did what we used to do in the old days: compose a politely worded business letter, free of tone, especially sarcasm.

The letter explained that the return was mailed at the Foster City Post Office and, according to the enclosed USPS tracking record, was received in Cincinnati on April 16th. Your move, IRS.

Note: the Washington Post reports that we are in the same boat with an unspecified number of taxpayers. [bold added]

As of Dec. 31, the IRS had 6 million unprocessed individual returns, including returns for the 2020 tax year...

Many taxpayers have been receiving what’s called a “CP80 Notice.” Taxpayers who had already filed a return are told to send a newly signed copy to the address listed in the notice.

Obviously, this direction has alarmed those taxpayers who conclude their original returns are probably in a pile in some IRS office waiting to be processed. Wouldn’t mailing another return just cause more confusion?

Spending More and Getting Less

We took a Federal and California tax return to the Post Office today. Both were required to be postmarked by Monday, May 17th, and we did the mailing a few days early. (These returns weren't ours, which were mailed on April 14th.)

First-class mail service has deteriorated. It will take four days to deliver the 1040 to Fresno, which is 180 miles (3¼ hours) away.

Worse, the USPS estimates that Form 540 will be delivered on Tuesday to Sacramento, which is 110 miles (2 hours) from Foster City. It takes five days to get a piece of mail to the State Capitol.

If speediness were crucial I would have driven the tax returns to the destinations myself, as I've done a few times in my career.

Services that the government provides---police, schools, mail, tax processing, border patrol, public health--have experienced well-publicized failures during the past year. During the same period the private sector has erected the infrastructure to work from home and produced COVID-19 vaccines years earlier than anyone had a right to expect.

Meanwhile, based on its stellar record, the government takeover of the economy continues apace with an explosion of taxes and spending....

IRS: So What, We Cannot Lose Them as Customers

Despite a backlog of millions of pieces of unopened mail--some containing checks from taxpayers---the IRS is sending out late payment notices.

Rep. Neal (Accounting Today)

Many taxpayers have been receiving balance-due notices from the IRS even though they sent in their tax payments to the IRS months ago, because trailers full of mail have remained unopened since the start of the pandemic....

“IRS officials reported that, due to office closures, the IRS has accumulated a staggering backlog of unopened mail,” [Rep. Richard Neal, D-Massachusetts] wrote in a letter Wednesday to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig. “At one point this summer, the IRS had approximately 12 million pieces of unopened correspondence in its inventory. Despite this unprocessed mail, the IRS reportedly has been sending notices to taxpayers whose correspondence and payments remain unopened. Therefore, many of the taxpayers receiving these notices already have made the payments that the IRS seeks.”

...Neal would like the IRS to stop sending out the notices when there is still so much uncertainty about what taxes have been paid by check and are sitting in unopened envelopes.

The IRS acknowledged it has received
Mom's return 5 months after it was
mailed but has yet to send the refund.

Somehow businesses that have managed to stay alive have coped with the unprecedented stress of the COVID-19 lockdown.

A broad swath of Government agencies--e.g., the CDC, the State Department, public education, and the IRS--have demonstrated gross inefficiency, if not incompetence.

Taxpayers should be given the benefit of the doubt that the mistakes lie with the IRS, not them.

It also doesn't bode well for the November elections, when enormous burdens will be placed on the U.S. Postal Service.

On November 3rd I'm Voting in Person

Foster City polling center on March 3rd

By early March most Bay Area residents were aware of the coronavirus. Many people had already begun modifying their behavior: stocking up on food and cleaning supplies, minimizing going out, wearing masks, and washing hands.

However, concerns about this mysterious affliction did not deter a crowd, which included your humble blogger, from going to the polls during the March 3rd primaries.

It turned out that the virus had entered the Bay Area by January, perhaps even in December. And yet...there was no appreciable spike in infections despite the Statewide shelter-in-place having not begun until March 19th. (Infections and deaths as of March 31st were 8,155 and 171, respectively.)

With the current controversy about the reputed dangers of voting-in-person, the possible problems of widespread voting-by-mail, and the tribulations of the U.S. Postal Service, the above prefatory remarks are leading to the following point:

Wired: Honestly, Just Vote In Person—It’s Safer Than You Think

After state Democrats fought unsuccessfully to extend the deadline for mailing back absentee ballots, the ensuing photos of long lines at Milwaukee polling places seemed to presage an explosion of Covid-19 cases.

But the bomb never blew. As I [Gilad Edelman, Wired political writer and Yale JD] observed in May, there was no noticeable rise in coronavirus cases thanks to the Wisconsin primary. A follow-up study by researchers at the City of Milwaukee Health Department and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded, “No clear increase in cases, hospitalizations, or deaths was observed after the election.” In fact, case numbers in Milwaukee were lower in the weeks after the election than in the weeks before it. There are caveats: In-person turnout was low overall thanks to broad use of mail-in ballots, and we don’t know how coronavirus prevalence in March will compare with November. Still, it’s telling that there have been no credible reports of virus spikes attributable to any other election this year, even though ill-considered polling place closures have led to further instances of Milwaukee-style overcrowding.

I will wear a mask, practice social distancing, and bring hand sanitizer because I may be touching buttons, screens, and styluses. If there's in-person voting on November 3rd I'm going.

Payments Revolution or Devolution

The new Costco Visa has a chip but the
Costco machines are swipe only. Maybe
Costco doesn't trust the technology?

Despite nearly a year of preparation, the transition has not gone smoothly. [bold added]

The new Costco credit card was supposed to make everybody happy.....

As soon the switch went into effect, though, Costco members reported problems with the card and vented their frustrations on social media. Cards weren’t mailed on time, there were long delays on customer service lines, and in some cases cards couldn’t be activated at all. Citi, the card’s new issuer, has spent the past couple of weeks extinguishing fires.

Comments:

1) I activated the Costco credit card by doing it the old-fashioned way and used the phone. I then used it at Costco (without a hitch). Properly established, I set up an online ID on the Citi website and linked it to the credit card. However, the first payment will be via check.

2) When starting with a new vendor, bank, or credit card company, I always pay via check for a few months.

Get your account flowing---it's not good to miss your first payment---then set up the "modern" payment method (website, mobile pay, automatic transfer, etc.) that you prefer. Checks-mailed-to-a-lockbox are a proven system that has been around for decades, and the paperless methods for most companies are bolted on top of the existing system. Yes, planning ahead a few days is so very difficult, it's such a hassle writing a check and stamping an envelope, so go ahead and take your chances....

3) It's one's right to be a demanding customer and post complaints on message boards, but have you noticed that the majority who do the complaining are themselves quite slovenly in their work product? Conscientious workers know how hard it is to make things perfectly and make allowances when complex products are introduced.

Lines Not Present

The Post Office lines were much diminished from tax-filing-days past. The majority of Americans ("nearly 100 million taxpayers") now file their tax returns electronically and avoid the rush. Among those who do file on paper, the better-organized and many who are due refunds have already mailed theirs in.

I'm old-fashioned: I prefer mailing a paper version of our tax return. There's a solidity to the accomplishment, and its heft conveys a sense of the work involved. (I also confess to a streak of rebelliousness: electronic filing is for the IRS' convenience, not ours, no matter what they say about getting our refund a few days sooner. Why should we make their lives easier when they make ours so difficult? To be clear, I'm not referring to the amount I have to pay but on the labyrinthine complexity of the tax code.)

While we're printing the original return, it's no trouble to print an extra copy to store with the back-up materials. It's much easier to have information about each year in one physical folder, rather than to search for a computer return and a paper file when we're doing next year's return.

The Post Office is under a lot of pressure because of the losses it continues to incur. My small token of support was to mail the extension form on Tuesday. When the return is completed this summer, I'll be back in line.