by Nicholas Hamner
Investment Advisor Representative
[email protected]
We have talked ad nauseum about the changes to the tax code for 2026. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act added lots of new tweaks to what deductions we can take, and there were the annual systematic updates to the tax brackets. We have covered all of those changes at length.
What we haven’t talked about are two big things that can impact how you actually file your taxes.
Up first, identity protection personal identification numbers, or IP PINs.
IP PINs were created by the IRS in response to tax filing scams where scammers filed fraudulent returns using stolen Social Security numbers to generate and claim fraudulent refunds. To get an IP PIN, users log on to the IRS’s website using their ID.me account, claim their assigned PIN number for the year, and remember it. You may have done that. More likely, you may have done that and forgotten you did that. You’re not going to be able to file your taxes this year without that IP PIN.
Now’s a great time to check, make sure you know your IP PIN, and—if you don’t have one—enroll in the program and get one. The IRS has said they will mail those numbers out at the start of the year. Who knows when that will actually be mailed out? If you like to get an early start to your taxes, take the time to enroll in the program or verify your IP PIN on the IRS’s website here.
Next up, changes to the postal service.
Forever, it seems, we were able to claim the day we delivered a piece of mail to the post office as the date it was mailed. And that’s because for the longest time there was someone with a rubber stamp or a machine… with something akin to a rubber stamp… in the back of the office postmarking everything. We assumed the day we gave something to the post office was the day it was postmarked. In a legal sense, this assumption served as a marker of compliance. If you were given an offer, the date you mailed your acceptance (aka the date it was postmarked) was the date the offer was accepted. If you had a deadline and your postmark was before the deadline, you were considered to have met the deadline. The day you mailed it was the day it was postmarked, and the day it was postmarked was the day you mailed it.
No more.
Thanks to the continued rejiggering of the USPS, how mail is handled before it gets to the processing facilities, how mail is handled in processing facilities, and how mail delivered to local post offices is transported to those processing facilities, it may take multiple days for an item given to the USPS to receive that necessary postmark. What’s that mean for tax filing? Just because you mail it on the 15th doesn’t mean it will show as mailed on the 15th. It’s now the old Army rule: if you’re early you’re on time and if you’re on time you’re late.
If you file taxes by mail and you’re one of those folks who likes to wait until the last minute, you could very easily get a late filing penalty if you’re not careful. So you have two options. Option one? Don’t wait until the last minute and mail your tax returns a few days ahead of the deadline. Option two? Go inside a USPS retail location and request a manual/local postmark at the counter.
Good luck this tax season!