The day a letter is mailed at a U.S. Post Office may no longer be the day it is postmarked

A USPS postmark is now stamped at regional facilities.
(Adobe Stock photo)

Few ink stamps are as crucial to meeting modern deadlines as the U.S. Postal Service postmark; however, at the end of last month, USPS changed its transportation and stamping processes, potentially delaying when mail is physically postmarked.

Beginning on Dec. 24, a postmark "no longer shows the date you deposited a piece of mail with the U.S. Postal Service," reports Esther Fung of The Wall Street Journal. Instead, mail will be postmarked when it's processed at a regional facility, which could be days after it's mailed locally.

The USPS changed its postmark rule "as part of long-running efforts to modernize and cut costs," Fung writes. "Reducing postal-truck runs between processing facilities and local post offices can cut costs and emissions."

While the USPS doesn't classify postmarking as part of "its services," many systems and people, including the Internal Revenue Service, legal professionals, election officials and health insurers, use postmarks as evidence that something mailed met a set deadline.

The best way to ensure an important piece of mail gets postmarked on time is to go to the post office where it can be manually stamped. Fung adds, "Yet, that could be hard for people living in rural areas far from a post office."

For deadline-mandated postmarks on items such as taxes, college applications, and health insurance appeals, experts recommend mailing documents several days in advance, so the mail has time to reach the processing facility for its official postmark.