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which the petition “is mailed” refers to the September 3
envelope, not the September 16 envelope. Surely a taxpayer would
not prevail if the timely mailed envelope did not bear the
correct postage but the second, untimely envelope did. For
petitioner to qualify under section 7502(a), the September 3
envelope must have been timely sent, been properly addressed, and
borne the correct postage. That is, the envelope must have
complied with the requirements of section 7502(a). The September
3 envelope meets these requirements.
This reading of section 7502 is consistent with Price v.
Commissioner, 76 T.C. 389, 391, 394 (1981). In Price, the
petition contained in a timely mailed envelope was returned to
the taxpayer, who remailed it in an outer envelope after the 90-
day period. See id. We held that the inner envelope, postmarked
by the Postal Service within the prescribed period but containing
an incorrect ZIP code, was properly addressed. See id.2 The
original envelope in Price was mailed by certified mail.
However, that fact is irrelevant here because the certified mail
exception of section 7502(c)(2) establishes only that an envelope
2But cf. Cho v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1992-5, which
concluded that an original envelope that was returned to the
taxpayer for insufficient postage and then remailed to the Court
in another envelope was not “delivered” to the Court for purposes
of sec. 7502. The facts of Cho are distinguishable from those of
the instant case in that the original envelope in Cho did not
meet the prepaid postage requirement of sec. 7502(a)(2).
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