I had to file my tax by postal mail in the US. Granted there is the option to file online, but that only works for ~80% of the people when things are completely within the intended domain. I have just one extra item outside of standard salary slips and some investment income, so I had to file physically.

In my state (Minnesota), there is no free online filing for state income tax. You either pay for one of the online filing softwares, or print the sucker out and mail it in. I choose the latter :)

There is a lot of stuff that can make you ineligible for efiling.anything exceptional and not handled by the standard form requires efiling. They only just recently dropped the requirement for 83(b) elections to be sent in with your tax return, and until then I had to send in a paper return every time I did that.

I had to file by mail because I moved to a new state and got 2 W-2s for the same job, of which the W-2 for the former state left the federal fields (1-13) blank. This weird W-2 apparently makes me ineligible for e-file.

Edit: In hindsight, I could have just waited until the start of 2025 to update my address in the HR system and gotten a single, normal W-2, but then I would be both violating the remote work rules (by not adding my new work location) and (probably) committing tax fraud.

In Europe where I live sending birthday letters and the like to relatives is still a standard practice, at least in my social environment.

I click them manually every month. It's kind of a holdover from when I needed to time things in order to keep my checking account in the black, but I kept the process as it helps me keep track of my bills and catch any errors or discrepancies, which does happen.

It certainly takes less time than writing a check and stuffing an envelope, though, what with saved credentials and smartphones; I can do this in a matter of moments while lying in bed every other Friday morning.

Payment to a credit card often involves extra fees. And I don't want to give them autopay access to my checking account.

If a British 12 year old today were to need to write a cheque, I'd expect they would need to look up or be told how it's done.

I wouldn't expect them to need to buy a pen first, or to need several attempts to write 10 words nearly.

By only two months.

Your doorstep. You just leave it there and they pick it up.

Mailboxes are bidirectional. If there is outgoing mail in the mailbox your postal worker will take it to the post office. That is what the flag is for. Not sure how well this is adhered to anymore, to be fair. I could be out of date.

Even if you are in rural Alaska or something, drop boxes are checked on a rigid schedule as part of the mail delivery route. They’re reliable.

>My apartment complex doesn't have a visible USPS pickup anywhere that I know of.

They usually a slot or little door for outgoing letters, if your package was larger than that, sometimes you can leave them at the 'office' of your complex if they have one. But yeah, in your case, going to an actual post office might have been the solution if you don't trust the street mailboxes.

Most are picked up daily at a scheduled time.