HARRISBURG — With the deadline for filing income tax returns rapidly approaching, the Postal Service is getting ready for last minute filers.

Six Post Offices will offer extended retail window hours until 8 p.m. on Tax Night, April 18. Customers who need retail window service are advised to get to these Post Offices before 8 p.m. These are the only Post Offices locally with extended hours. All others will be open regular business hours. (Refer to the attached listing).

Additionally, last minute tax filers can deposit their tax return in the collection boxes in front of these six locations before 11:59 on April 18, this year’s tax deadline, and still receive a postmark.

Automated Postal Centers (APCs) are available at nineteen area Post Offices. Using a debit or credit card, customers can use the APC to weigh and mail their tax returns or regular mail and packages 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, at most locations.

Postal customers can easily avoid a trip to the main Post Office by mailing their returns or extension requests early in the day at any of the Post Offices, stations, branches or collection boxes in their community. However, tax filers using a collection box should make certain that the posted pick-up time has not passed to ensure returns will receive the April 18 postmark.

The Postal Service offers the following advice to tax filers:

• Mail as early in the day as possible.
• Always include your return address on your mailpiece.
• Be certain to weigh your returns or extension requests on a postal scale and affix the proper amount of postage. This is especially true if you are filing extra forms or schedules this year. Tax agencies will not pay postage due, so short-paid tax filings must be returned for additional postage. Ordinarily, that means you’ll miss the deadline.
• Customers who need retail window service are advised to get to the Post Office before closing time. Most Post Offices are open regular hours on April 18. Six are extending retail window hours until 8 p.m.

Editor’s note: A list of Post Offices with late mail collections and Automated Postal Centers (APCs) is attached.

The Post Offices listed below will extend their retail window hours until 8PM on April 18. Additionally, customers can deposit their taxes in the main collection boxes out front at these locations until 11:59 p.m. on Tax Night and still receive an April 18 postmark.

2011 April 18 Tax Night Extended Hours

*An asterisk denotes an office with an Automated Postal Center.

Additionally, Automated Postal Centers are located at these Post Offices:
Bethlehem, Chambersburg, Easton Palmer Branch, East York Branch, Gettysburg, Hanover, Lower Paxton Branch (Harrisburg), Mechanicsburg, Shillington, Reading Station, West York Branch (York), Whitehall, Wilkes-Barre and Wyomissing.

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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.