Forwarding Mail

2oldman wrote:
OP is gone.

When I first saw a topic by a brand new member that had been discussed a hundred times I was wondering if it is yet another idiot having their own special kind of fun.

Dave

OP is gone.

Sadly, mail forwarding by the USPS is not reliable. It might work in smaller communities but it seems to be a totally manual system that does not work in larger communities. When I sold my house and wanted the mail forwarded to my mail handling service in South Dakota, the Post Office could not make it happen. I visited the post office 3 times but the mail just kept being dropped in my old box even after we moved out and there were new home owners.

Eventually a major piece of mail with a large check was not forwarded and was eventually returned to the sender. I found out a couple of years later when the IRS sent me a notice that I filed incorrectly and owed a major amount of capital gains.

Using a mail forwarding service does NOT change your residency. You can keep your residency where it is, but use a mail service from any state to receive your mail. You will need a residence address (could use son's) and would always list both the resident and mail address on anything you do including taxes. To become a resident somewhere else you would have to do other things just as if you were actually moving.

magicbus wrote:
Now in Massachusetts when you register for a drivers license they automatically register you to vote. As far as legal residency I have always found it to be where ever you filed your Federal Taxes from.

If you get a Mass License, presumably, you have moved there.

I'm talking about it you don't get a new legal residence. More typical of expats living overseas but possible with an RV.

We sold our house and used our sons address for a few months until we bought another house in his state. When we moved to our new house my wife turned in a change of address for her and I as INDIVIDUALS, not for the whole family. Well next thing you know our illustrious dipsticks at the Usps started sending his mail to our house like he had also moved.

I went to our post office and the lady verified that my wife filed us as individuals and his mail shouldn’t have changed. I showed her all his mail and she shrugged her shoulders and said tell your son to call his post office. So my son went to his post office and they verified that he had not moved and that my wife and I moved as individuals. It continued on and I sent all my sons mail to him a few times. The next thing that happened is that my dil was at a gas station and her credit card wouldn’t work.

My son left work to go get her and then called Chase to see why the cc wouldn’t work. They said that the Usps had notified them of my sons address change so the zip code that she was entering at the pump was wrong. He then went to the post office and put in a change of address from my house to his house and the mail seems to be subsiding at my house. You can’t fix stupid when it comes to gov run agencies. No more using anyone’s address even for forwarding, I’ll go with the escapees mail service next time.

2oldman wrote:

magicbus wrote:
. I recently received a letter from (IRS) them saying I owed money because of a mistake they made in their instructions on some form I used for 2018.

If you filed by mail, I could understand that, but if you filed electronically, that "letter" should go to the email of the person who filed.

No. I E-filed and the letter and subsequent bill were only snail-mailed to the address on my tax form. I think part of the reason is to also notify my wife (joint filers) in case she was unaware (which she was but so was I!) :)

Dave

magicbus wrote:
. I recently received a letter from (IRS) them saying I owed money because of a mistake they made in their instructions on some form I used for 2018.

If you filed by mail, I could understand that, but if you filed electronically, that "letter" should go to the email of the person who filed.

2oldman wrote:
Do everything you can to avoid paper mail.. especially bills. You're going to get some surprises as to how long mail can actually take when you need it most.

Good advice. One piece of paper mail you do not want to miss is a letter from the IRS. This will go to the address you use on your taxes so you need that to be reliable. You can create an online account but you would need to check it at least monthly. I recently received a letter from them saying I owed money because of a mistake they made in their instructions on some form I used for 2018. I updated TurboTax and sure enough owed money. You really don’t want to miss letters from the IRS and you never know when they will show up.

BTW, if your son handles your mail or you use a service, make sure to use the USPS moving/forwarding service to your new “address”.

Dave

Do everything you can to avoid paper mail.. especially bills. You're going to get some surprises as to how long mail can actually take when you need it most.