Who owns and operates the usps

All of which are typical functions and powers of a private business. The post office provides various services to customers, such as holding mail for up to 30 days at their facility.

However, unlike other private businesses, the Postal Service is exempt from paying federal taxes. USPS can borrow money at discounted rates and can condemn and acquire private property under governmental rights of eminent domain.

The USPS does get some taxpayer support. A portion of the funds also pays USPS for providing address information to state and local child support enforcement agencies.

Under federal law, only the Postal Service can handle or charge postage for handling letters. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance.

Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Issues The U. Legal System U. Subscriber Account active since. In a matter of weeks, the US Postal Service has gone from a regular staple of American streets to a full-blown national discussion, where the debate centers on its very livelihood in years to come.

But many tangential arguments about the fate of the Postal Service circle back to one big question: whether we, as a public, need it to function as a business or a service.

Right now, it does a lot of both. In mid July, newly appointed US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy introduced wide-ranging cost-cutting measures that thrust the US Postal Service into a political maelstrom and made its coronavirus-fueled funding crisis front-page news. The operational overhaul earned DeJoy blowback from lawmakers and citizens who were concerned the changes would delay the mail and put November's mail-in ballots in jeopardy. In the wake of the new policies, which the Postal Service announced it would walk back last week, Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, discussed the very nature of the Postal Service with Business Insider.

But when you take a hard look at the Postal Service, it's structured to function both as a business and as a service — often having to grapple with the worst aspects of each. The challenge of operating simultaneously as a revenue-generating enterprise and a public good — with pressures from the market on one side and pressures from Congress on the other — puts the post office in a difficult situation. With that situation now in the national spotlight, the full spectrum of onlookers, from laypersons to postal experts, is calling for change.

But many have vastly different ideas of what that might look like. Make no mistake, the US Postal Service is a government agency; US Code classifies it as an "independent establishment of the executive branch.

The organization is designed instead to be self-sufficient and to cover its operating costs through the sale of postage, services, and other products like crop tops , for instance. The post office's roughly , career employees have collective-bargaining rights , and the service competes for customers' business with private-sector companies like FedEx and UPS. However, very much unlike its competitors, the Postal Service operates with a strict mandate from Congress and is boxed in by all manner of government regulations — it's a federal agency, after all.

The Postal Reorganization Act of — which created the post office as we know it today — established the organization as a "basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the Government of the United States, authorized by the Constitution, created by Act of Congress, and supported by the people," with the basic function to "bind the Nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people.

The Postal Service is required by law to deliver mail to each and every address in the country for a low, standard rate. Except for extenuating circumstances, it can only raise rates to account for inflation.

Since it legally must deliver mail even to the most far-flung reaches of the country, the Postal Service is under pressure to maintain rural post-office locations that aren't cost-effective to run. Meanwhile, private outfits like Amazon, FedEx, and UPS are free to charge high fees to ship to addresses that are too far from major hubs, or simply pass their packages off to the post office.

Those companies depend on the post office for last-mile delivery to remote areas because it's not profitable for them, and the post office instead takes the hit.

Amazon, for instance, operates a vast and growing delivery network but only focuses on the nation's densest — and therefore most lucrative — areas, according to a report from Morgan Stanley , leaving the low-margin routes primarily to the Postal Service. Many are familiar with our history, which began with the Second Continental Congress and Benjamin Franklin in and continued in when the Postal Clause of the U.

Constitution empowered Congress to establish post offices and post roads. Congress exercised those powers with the passage of The Post Office Act of , which made the Postal Service a permanent fixture of the Federal Government.

These principles and objectives endure. While radio, television and the Internet have irrevocably altered our information-gathering habits, postal correspondence remains the most secure and resilient form of communication, providing the American People with a delivery infrastructure vital to our National Security.

USPS retains the largest physical and logistical infrastructure of any non-military government institution, providing an indispensable foundation supporting an ever changing and evolving nationwide communication network. Capitalizing on its expertise in scheduling and high-volume sorting, USPS also serves a vital role enabling digital commerce. About the United States Postal Service.