SAN FRANCISCO — With more people filing their taxes online, fewer are mailing their returns through the U.S. Postal Service. For those last-minute filers, two Post Offices in the San Francisco Postal District will be extending retail hours, and three will be offering curbside drop-off service on Monday, April 18, 2011.

Because April 15, 2011, is a holiday in Washington DC, this year tax day, or the last day to file your 2010 federal and state tax forms without requesting an extension, is Monday, April 18, 2011. All tax filers are urged to plan well in advance of April 18, or they risk missing the midnight deadline.

For San Francisco, peninsula and northwest California tax filers, the following Postal Service facilities are extending their hours or providing curbside drop off:

All other San Francisco, peninsula and northwest California Post Offices will be open normal hours. Hours of operation for Post Offices can be found by visiting USPS.com or calling 1-800-ASK-USPS (1-800-275-8777).

Waiting until the last minute is usually not a good idea. Rushing can cause mistakes, and the most common errors Americans make are not including enough postage and not providing the correct IRS mailing address. Other common mistakes, according to the IRS: Social Security Numbers are wrong or left off, math errors and forgetting to attach forms and schedules, e.g., W-2s, 1099s, etc.

To help ensure a successful tax season for customers, the Postal Service offers the following tax mailing tips:

• Apply proper postage and stamps, especially with extra forms/schedules. It costs 44 cents for the first ounce; 20 cents for each additional ounce. (One ounce is about four pages).
• If you use a non-IRS labeled envelope, make sure you print the proper IRS address.
• Print your return address in the upper-left-hand corner of your tax mail envelope.
• Customers who wish certification that their tax mail form is received by the IRS should mail it using Certified Mail Service/Return Receipt, which is available at your local Post Office.
• While encouraged to mail before April 18, if you do wait until late on Tax Day be sure to drop off your tax mail return at a Postal Service location that offers late tax mail pick-up.

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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $67 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 29th in the 2010 Fortune 500. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency six consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.