IRS Sends 1040 Packets With Misprinted Address Labels

After months of pledging technical innovation and better customer service, a red-faced Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that a million packets of 1040 and other forms recently sent to taxpayers contain incorrect pre-printed address labels.

If a taxpayer tries to use the address label, the returns will probably never make it to the IRS but instead will be shipped back to the taxpayer’s mailbox.

IRS officials blamed the error on a printing contractor. The letters and numbers on the labels are correct, they said, but the bar code, which the Postal Service’s processing machines read, contains the taxpayer’s own ZIP Code rather than the correct one for the IRS service center.

The label was intended to be a money-saving innovation. In the past, the agency has sent pre-addressed envelopes with tax packets. This year, to save on the cost of printing envelopes separately, it allowed contractors to include a peel-off address label for the taxpayer to affix to the envelope. One contractor that adopted this approach misprinted the bar codes.

The affected packets were mailed to taxpayers on the East and West coasts. They are on packets known as 1040-5 and 1040-10, which include a variety of forms, including the 1040 itself and Schedules A, B, C, D and EIC.

The numbers 1040-5 and 1040-10 are printed on the back of the packet and are easy to spot, an IRS spokesman said.

Also, taxpayers can compare the bar code on the label with the one in their own address on the outside of the packet. If they match, the label is wrong.

The IRS is sending new labels to affected taxpayers. Those who don’t want to wait, though, can cross out the bar code on the label, officials said.

The spokesman said the agency expects the contractor to pay for the foul-up.