The IRS Has a Little Something in the Mail for Your New Year

The Internal Revenue Service offers this sobering reminder to anyone nursing a holiday hangover--110 million tax forms will start appearing in mailboxes Thursday.

After years of mailing its packages just after Christmas, the IRS this year decided to turn its annual Christmas card into a New Year’s greeting.

Last year, the IRS moved the mailing date from Dec. 26 to Dec. 28. This year, in what agency officials described as a further effort to avoid dampening holiday spirits, the agency postponed the date again.

Most taxpayers should receive their Form 1040, 1040A or 1040EZ by the end of next week, but a few may already have their packages, thanks to eager local postmasters who ignored IRS instructions and jumped the gun.

The IRS said it is mailing 110 million forms, at a cost of $32 million. Forms and instructions are also available at banks, post offices, libraries and local IRS offices.

The tax forms, for the third year in a row, will be largely unchanged from the previous year. However, the IRS, hoping to eliminate one of taxpayers’ most common mistakes, is printing the standard deduction amounts on the return rather than requiring filers to look up the amount in their instruction booklets.