Countywide : Tax Filers Play Beat the Clock

Glenn Hardwick always pays his bills on time.

But this time, there were circumstances. This time, his brother was sick. And a trip to Utah to visit the ailing brother was extended to two weeks, and then a month.

So, on Monday, Hardwick, 25, from Irvine, found himself joining tens of thousands of others who scurried to their accountants or tax preparers and then made a mad dash to the post office.

“I’ve waited to the last moment before, and I told myself I wouldn’t again because of the hassle. But here I am again,” lamented Hardwick as he stood in line fidgeting with documents, waiting for an available preparer at the H&R; Block offices in South Coast Plaza.

More than a million income tax envelopes addressed to the Fresno office of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service were expected to be received at post offices in Orange County by the deadline at midnight Monday, said Hector Godinez, the Postal Service regional postmaster in Santa Ana.

To handle that massive load, Godinez said about 75 additional clerks were called in on Monday to work at strategic post offices in Orange County. On a normal day, Postal Service machines handle about 800,000 pieces of mail. But Godinez said Monday’s workload was expected to increase to 2 million, with the bulk from last-minute filers, which represents an increase of about 5% over last year.

Police assisted with traffic enforcement at various post office locations in the county, including the postal service’s Sunflower Avenue headquarters in Santa Ana.

For the 1,100 IRS employees in Orange County, it was “the busiest day of the year,” said Sally Ruhnau, an IRS spokeswoman in Laguna Niguel.

But one segment of the population allowed to slide--at least for a while-- were military personnel who had participated in Desert Storm. Those men and women received automatic 180-day extensions, Ruhnau said.

“With the county’s two big bases, Tustin and El Toro, we know the troops were coming home late, and in order to file their income taxes, they needed more time,” she said.

Another group who didn’t have to worry about post office lines were the 600 to 800 county residents taking part in special electronic filing programs offered through the IRS this year, Ruhnau said. The program, which was limited to about 2,000 residents in San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial and Orange counties, allows taxpayers to go either to a tax preparer or to a center approved by the IRS for electronically transmitting tax returns to the agency’s regional refund center in Ogden, Utah.

Electronic filing is a 4-year-old system which the IRS has been phasing in across the country. Eventually, it will allow taxpayers to use home computers to file returns and, possibly, to use credit cards to pay taxes due.

With electronic filing, taxpayers can expect to get their refund in the mail in three weeks, Ruhnau said. In contrast, if you filed on April 15, she said, you can expect to wait six to eight weeks for a refund check.

As for credit cards, Ruhnau said that while some private companies will loan taxpayers money to pay their income taxes and put it on a credit card, the IRS itself “will continue to accept cash, and cash only.”

A host of private and public tax preparation groups were working overtime this past weekend to help the late filers. And on Monday, many tax preparers were doing a brisk business.

“I procrastinate every year and wait for the last minute ,” said Don Provencher, 31, of Costa Mesa as he stood in line.

“The only reason I am here at H&R; Block today is because I waited too late to have a friend do them,” he said. “Besides, I am not expecting very much back, so why worry . . . I mean, the money is already spent.”