Suffolk News-Herald

You have only nine days to prepare your state and federal forms before they are due to be postmarked at 11:59 p.m. April 15. To avoid a traffic jam at the Suffolk Postal Service near the deadline, your best bet will be to mail yours off by the end of this week.

Traffic during the week at the local post office on North Main Street seems to be running moderate to heavy at times; so to make your mailing procedure less complicated and less stressful, the United States Postal Service has issued some vital information.

First, to give you more time to get your forms in after working hours, the post office will remain open until 6 p.m. April 15.

Customers are encouraged to mail their tax returns as early in the day as possible, and postal officials suggest weighing your returns or extensions on a postal scale to calculate the proper amount of postage. This is especially vital if a customer is filing extra forms or schedules because tax agencies will not pay postage due, and short-paid tax filings will be returned to the sender for additional postage. Ordinarily that means they will miss the deadline. However, at this time of year, the IRS accepts the postmark as a validation of timely filing.

According to the United States Postal Service, customers mailing tax deadline packages weighing 16 ounces and over and bearing postage in the form of postage stamps, must mail these packages at postal retail windows. Tax fliers should double check the pickup schedule if they elect to use a street side collection box to ensure their tax documents will be collected and postmarked before the deadline. Every tax filing will receive an official April 15 postmark if it is properly prepared for mailing and deposited by the designated cutoff time.