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Filing Taxes From Coachella's Post Office

By Ephrat Livni, Esq. on April 21, 2016 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Coachella is an annual music festival in the California desert that draws stars of all stripes -- from pop goddesses like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift to Victoria's Secret Angels. So you might imagine that people who attend are too cool to worry about taxes, or so rich that someone else has to manage all that wealth.

You'd be wrong. In fact, it turns out some of the festival's attendees tried to mail their taxes from a makeshift post office on the grounds. There were at least ten such attempts on the first day of Coachella, reports the San Jose Mercury News. The local post-master wants everyone to know that it's not happening. "No, I can't 'just take it,'" Megan Hampton said. "How do they have their taxes here? I don't know."

On-Time Filing

Taxes were due, as you no doubt knew, on April 18. Coachella was already underway by then and the local post-office had already set up shop in its log cabin.

The local "post office" is actually just a life-sized version of a Lincoln Log cabin created by an artist for the festival. It has been re-purposed to serve as a post office, and mailing things from there is reportedly pretty popular.

Megan Hampton, who runs the extension postal branch explained that people try to mail all kinds of things, including merchandise, postcards, and even their taxes. One couple sent their wedding invitations from the festival because they wanted their mail to say Coachella on it.

Tax Filers Turned Down

Hampton was willing to send the wedding invitations, but turned down the tax filers and some others, including a woman trying to complete an eBay transaction from the Lincoln Log cabin. She said that the festival branch of the post office is not technically a post office at all -- in fact, last year it was in a tiny tent.

The vast majority of mail people send from the festival are postcards, as well as the occasional drunken letter to grandma, according to the post-master. For better or worse, she said that many of these missives are incoherently addressed and probably not destined to reach the intended recipient. Grandma will be so disappointed.

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