Tax Day lines dwindle at post office

Extra staff worked the three windows to keep up with the flood of last-minute filers clamoring for precious red postmarks proving they mailed their taxes on time. Phones rang incessantly with callers wanting to know when the doors closed.

"In 1990, that's when Tax Day was Tax Day," Day said in the wistful tone of a veteran. "It was comparable to Christmas. It was kind of exciting."

This year, the phones stayed quiet. Regular staffing handled a steady but relatively slow flow of customers. And for the second straight year, not a single post office in Massachusetts extended its hours for last-moment filers, who can now simply click "send" at 11:59 p.m. from the comfort of their home computers.

"Maybe it's more like Mother's Day now," said Day, citing a busy but not overwhelming day in the postal world.

Since e-filing went national in 1990, the number of people submitting electronic tax returns has increased 20-fold. Last year about 90 million - or 57 percent of taxpayers nationwide - filed online.

In 2008, 56 percent of Massachusetts taxpayers filed online - roughly twice as many as five years ago - eliminating more than 2 million trips to the post office.

The profound shift in something as elemental as paying taxes illustrates how completely the Internet has infiltrated and changed life. The local postal headquarters at Fort Point Station in Boston, where mail can still be postmarked until midnight, is the last bastion of the desperate. Even there, while there were lines of customers last night, the frantic crush from years past is greatly diminished.

With the crowds lessened, April 15 no longer means live radio station broadcasts or bands playing in the lobby. Gone, too, are the woman dressed like an angel who handed out aspirin to exhausted accountants and the other vendors from years past giving away complimentary Edy's Ice Cream, Starbucks coffee, and Cape Cod potato chips to waves of procrastinators trying to make the annual deadline.

"We had table after table after table of tax forms. People were not just mailing their taxes, but literally doing their taxes," said Michael King, the Brookline postmaster who worked Fort Point Station on Tax Day 1993, his first year in the postal service. "At several points, people actually asked me for tax advice."

The mood was far from festive yesterday afternoon inside the post office near South Station, where some 30 people waited in fast-moving lines. A postal employee worked the lobby, walking among the patrons and calling out for letters needing postmarks.

Many customers said they had already filed their returns online, but came to the post office to mail forms that could not be submitted through the Web. That included Wendy Harrington, 42, of South Boston, who sat at a table covered with paperwork and said she liked feeling "physically responsible for mailing" her tax forms. Harrington acknowledged, however, that her accountant filed most of her forms electronically.

On the seventh floor of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Government Center, a constant stream of people waited for assistance with forms, extensions, and payments.

The line snaked across the worn gray carpet and out of the open door of the local office of the Internal Revenue Service as people nervously clutched paperwork.

Millions of others turn to computer programs such as TurboTax, which offered its first online version in 1998 to a test group of 10,000 customers. On April 10, 2000, the company hit the 1 million mark for annual online users, and its customers have soared exponentially since, reaching 8.5 million through March 14 of this year.

"There is an ease and convenience factor," said Julie Miller, a spokeswoman for Intuit Inc., which owns TurboTax. "I can do it from home. I can do it when I want. I don't have to make an appointment. I don't have to go down to the post office on April 15."

While the Internet has taken a bite out of the tax preparation industry, accountants say technological efficiencies have been more of a blessing than a curse. Quick e-mails answer simple questions that once required phone calls. Documents can be shipped electronically for quick approval. And everything can be submitted with a few key strokes.

"No more trip to the post office and standing in line," said Nick Puniello, who has been an accountant for more than 30 years. At 4 p.m. yesterday, he said something that would have been unimaginable a few April 15ths ago.

"I'm going to pour a martini in about two hours," Puniello said. "That's my goal."

Globe correspondent Jenna Nierstedt contributed to this story.