Signed, Sealed, Slowly Delivered: IRS Questions Mail Timeliness

An annoyed taxpayer recently fumed that her check to the Internal Revenue Service took 16 days to travel fewer than 25 miles. It was the second time in a month that she had experienced a postal service related delay that affected her taxes. While I certainly had sympathy for her, it’s not nearly as bad as what happened to taxpayers in Washington state: A Tax Court petition took almost a month to arrive in Washington, D.C., putting the taxpayers’ appeal in jeopardy.

In the Washington state case, the IRS on March 28, 2017 mailed a notice of deficiency to ...