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

The Harrisburg Main Post Office, (1425 Crooked Hill Road, Harrisburg), will offer extended retail window hours until 8 p.m. on Tax Night, April 15.  Customers who need retail window service are advised to get to the Post Office before 8 p.m.  Additionally, last minute tax filers can deposit their tax return in the collection boxes in front of this Post Office until 11:59PM on April 15, this year’s tax deadline, and still receive a postmark.

The Harrisburg Post Office is the only one in the immediate area with extended hours. All others will be open regular business hours.

Self Service Mailing and Shipping Centers are available at nineteen area Post Offices.  Using a debit or credit card, customers can use the Self Service Mailing and Shipping Center 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 15 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.

Self Service Mailing and Shipping Centers are located at these Post Offices: Bethlehem, Chambersburg, Easton Palmer Branch, East York Branch, Gettysburg, Hanover, Harrisburg Main, Lancaster Main, Lehigh Valley, Lower Paxton Branch (Harrisburg), Mechanicsburg, Reading Station, Reading Gus Yatron, Shillington, Scranton Main, West York Branch (York), Whitehall, Wilkes-Barre and Wyomissing.

For an electronic version of this news release, send an email to mhnasko@usps.gov.

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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 — 151 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 $65 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 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500. In 2011, Oxford Strategic Consulting ranked the U.S. Postal Service number one in overall service performance of the posts in the top 20 wealthiest nations in the world. 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 for six years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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