is certificate of mailing accepted by the IRS?

From a 1998 decision that I dug up on the IRS website:

Unlike a receipt for certified or registered mail, a U.S.
Postal Service Certificate of Mailing (Form 3817) does not
conclusively prove the date of mailing of a tax return, and is
inadmissible to contradict an untimely postmark appearing on the
envelope in which a return is mailed. However, a certificate of
mailing is admissible to help establish the mailing date of a tax
return if a postmark on the envelope in which a return is mailed
is missing or illegible. Finally, depending on the judicial
circuit in which taxpayers reside, a certificate of mailing may
be inadmissible to prove timely mailing in cases of nondelivery
of the return to the Service.

See here.

ohh..many thanks...guess i'll have to use certified mail..

m8086 said: The certified mail is about the same price as fedex ground or DHL, while Fedex and DHL has tracking as well. Can I use Fedex or DHL to send the mails to IRS, or will there be any issues?
Fedex and DHL don't normally deliver to a PO Box.

gatzdon said: I swear, the USPS is killing itself because their employees are failing to maintain integrity with the services that they provide. Theoretically, it should be sufficient proof, but in the early years of doing rebates, I tried the cheaper certificate of mailing, and they postmarked a blank form for me. Their manual requires them to verify that the address on it matches the envelope it's supposed to compliment prior to postmarking the form. So yeah, I can see why the IRS would not accept it as proof.

Anyway, that was a good find by mariojm.

With electronic postage you can postmark somthing for today but throw it in the mailbox in 3 days and they will not really know. I would assume thats the reasoning.

m8086 said: The certified mail is about the same price as fedex ground or DHL, while Fedex and DHL has tracking as well. Can I use Fedex or DHL to send the mails to IRS, or will there be any issues?

Fedex Ground and DHL Ground are not approved private delivery services.

If the IRS claims that it did not receive your return, nothing issued by any approved or unapproved private delivery service will be proof of filing.

MaxRC said: When my wife was a tax accountant at a large local accounting firm (DC area), they never sent registered or certified or messed with UPS/FedEx/DHL. Everything goes regular first class. As long as it has a postmark for 4/15, that's all it needs.

They never had a single lost return.

The MOST they do is hand deliver a return to a post office on the 15th and make sure that the clerk puts a post mark on the envelope.

that's fine if you are an accounting firm, doing lots of returns in bulk, and having people/resoures to deal with issues if a few of them do get lost.

for private individuals, the headache involved when the return does get lost is well worth paying for certified mail.

my return for CA taxes last year encountered lots of problems. it took me several calls to FTB CSRs to get them straightened out. (the morons LOST my check and claimed i never sent one ! without the certified mail, they would likely have claimed i had never filed my tax return at all, i am sure.) i benefitted from the fact that i had proof of having sent by certified mail.

Anakin

MaxRC said: Which part of "They never had a single lost return" was difficult to understand?What exactly is the nature of the argument here? MaxRC, I hope you are not saying that USPS is infallible and never loses anything. Yes, the chances that the return will get lost, misplaced or misdelivered are not particularly high but, if it does happen, to a lot of people the headache associated therewith is simply not worth trying to save a few bucks. I don't think that the decision to send the return via 1st class mail can be appropriately characterized as "gambling" but I do not also see anything wrong with spending just a few dollars to minimize the magnitude of any potential problems.

geo123 said: MaxRC said: Which part of "They never had a single lost return" was difficult to understand?What exactly is the nature of the argument here? MaxRC, I hope you are not saying that USPS is infallible and never loses anything.The argument is clear and your subsequent comments indicate that you know what it is: the chance of a lost return does not justify the extra expense beyond first-class mail. Is *ANYTHING* infallible?

geo123 said: Yes, the chances that the return will get lost, misplaced or misdelivered are not particularly high but, if it does happen, to a lot of people the headache associated therewith is simply not worth trying to save a few bucks.Hindsight is always 20/20 but it's irrelevant in weighing what might happen in the *future* with what it costs to mitigate the risk. Sure if it happens, I'd rather have spent the extra money on registered mail. But we don't know yet what will happen in the future. Do you? If you are just inadequate at fortune telling as the rest of us, how do you justify spending more money to mitigate a risk that has a miniscule chance of happening?

geo123 said: I don't think that the decision to send the return via 1st class mail can be appropriately characterized as "gambling" but I do not also see anything wrong with spending just a few dollars to minimize the magnitude of any potential problems.There is nothing *wrong* with it - people spend money however they want. But from a risk-benefit point of view, it simply is not the prudent thing to do, as evident by the practice of companies who file a large number of tax returns as a part of their business. These accounting firms prepare tax returns for wealthy individuals, the late pentalty for whom is much more severe than the average Joe. Yet they choose to mail everything first class.

Edit: Just wanted to add that my reply to Anakin was primarily to counter his assertion that the accounting firm I mentioned mail first-class because they have the resources to handle the issues arising from lost returns - when I clearly indicated in my original post that the firm had never experienced a lost return that was mailed first class. So having the resources to handle lost returns is *clearly* not the reason that they mail first class.

With all due respect, I am still somewhat mystified about the need to spend so much time and to use so many buzz words to belabor an expense as minor as the cost of certified mail. Since I've previously allowed myself to be baited into similarly nonsensical arguments, however, perhaps I am just not one to talk here though. Best of luck with this.

geo123 said: With all due respect, I am still somewhat mystified about the need to spend so much time and to use so many buzz words to belabor an expense as minor as the cost of certified mail. Since I've previously allowed myself to be baited into similarly nonsensical arguments, however, perhaps I am just not one to talk here though. Best of luck with this.It is rather curious for you to direct this at me when I am only replying to a thread that someone else started 5 days before my first post. And I only replied because I had a simple solution to offer: first class with appropriate post mark. As to why the hyperventilating was going on about registerd/certified/UPS/FedEX/DHL, well, I am sure you can ask the other posters about it.

davef139 said: gatzdon said: I swear, the USPS is killing itself because their employees are failing to maintain integrity with the services that they provide. Theoretically, it should be sufficient proof, but in the early years of doing rebates, I tried the cheaper certificate of mailing, and they postmarked a blank form for me. Their manual requires them to verify that the address on it matches the envelope it's supposed to compliment prior to postmarking the form. So yeah, I can see why the IRS would not accept it as proof.

Anyway, that was a good find by mariojm.

With electronic postage you can postmark somthing for today but throw it in the mailbox in 3 days and they will not really know. I would assume thats the reasoning.

With electronic postage sites (like paypal, stamps.com) you need to specify the data of postage. The postage is valid for that only. If for some reason you are not able to send out the mail on that date, you are required to void that label (to get a refund) and print another label. Now, this is what the book says, but this might not be happening in real life. I was not aware of this date restriction earlier and I have been able to send out a couple of mails on the worng date and they have reached the destination just fine.

ajny said: With electronic postage sites (like paypal, stamps.com) you need to specify the data of postage. The postage is valid for that only. If for some reason you are not able to send out the mail on that date, you are required to void that label ...

I have seen mail re-canceled that was submitted with a backdated meter strip. Way back in the day we used to check for that sort of thing on 4/15.