TAXES MUST BE POSTMARKED BY MIDNIGHT

Taxpayers waiting until the final moment to place their tax forms in the mail have plenty of company.

Tax forms must be postmarked by midnight tonight, and many post offices are expecting long lines today as procrastinators send an estimated 44 million pieces of mail containing tax returns.

Almost a million of those last-minute tax forms will be mailed in Missouri.

There has been a change in the mailing pattern for people in Cape Girardeau, said Postmaster Mike Keefe.

Don't drop them in the box at the downtown post office at 320 N. Frederick after 7:45 p.m.

"Take them to the mail processing center at 475 Kell Farm Drive in Cape West Business Park," said Keefe.

In previous years, Keefe has made a special trip to the downtown postal facility to make sure all mail in the drive-up box was taken in and postmarked before midnight, April 15.

In recent years, however, most of the taxes were mailed by 7:45 p.m. "We had only a few mailings after that," said Keefe.

The processing center is open all night, and mail will be postmarked April 15 at midnight.

A sign will be placed on the downtown postal facility's drive-up mailbox, reminding tax payers to take their taxes to the processing center box.

"The postmark is the thing," said Keefe. "As long as the envelope is postmarked, it doesn't matter when the taxes reach the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS is going to look at the postmark."

State revenue representatives will be at the downtown post office from 5 to 7 p.m. to answer last-minute tax questions. They will also have forms to request an extension of time to fill 1997 returns. However, they will not prepare any tax returns at the post office.

The IRS is offering extended hours for today at the Missouri Department of Revenue office, 137 S. Broadview. Representatives will be in their offices from 2 to 6 p.m.

The "request for extension" form is a popular one during the final days before deadline.

"We estimate as many as 85,000 Missouri tax payers will receive extensions," said Rolle Woods, communications specialist with the Internal Revenue Service, St. Louis District. "That would be about average."

Taxpayers filing extensions papers are reminded that even with the extension, there will be interest charges -- 5 percent a month -- on any taxes paid after April 15.

To keep the charges as low as possible, IRS officials advises taxpayers to pay as much as they can as soon as they can.

Almost a million Missourians have waited until the final day to place their income tax returns in the mail.

By the recent weekend, just over half of Missouri taxpayers had submitted their tax forms, Wood said.

Woods said the state projects about 2.3 million tax returns. A total of 1.3 million returns were filed prior to last weekend. That total was up slightly from 1996.

By today, about 900,000 Missourians had still not filed their returns.

Nationally, more than 50 percent of the 124 million expected returns have been filed, a little ahead of 1996.

Taxpayers filing paper returns can expect an eight-to-10-week wait for refunds. Taxpayers filing electronically may receive their refunds within three weeks.

IRS representatives stress two things for all income tax filers: "Check your math and sign your tax forms."

"An income tax form is not considered complete until it is signed," said Woods.