09/02/2026
When Bremer County property tax statements are mailed, undeliverable statements are returned to the Treasurer’s Office, even when the Postal Service has a forwarding address on file.
That is intentional.
Rather than allowing the USPS to automatically forward our property tax statements, we have them returned to us. When a statement comes back, our office inventories the return and tracks it in a spreadsheet. This allows us to identify property records that have incorrect, incomplete, or outdated mailing information.
If the USPS provides a forwarding address on the returned envelope, we document that information and remail the property tax statement to the forwarding address.
If the USPS does not provide a forwarding address, our work doesn’t necessarily stop there. We use other available resources to try to locate a current mailing address so we can successfully get the statement into the property owner’s hands. When we locate one, we remail the statement and notify the property owner that their official property record still needs to be updated.
Sometimes, despite those efforts, we simply cannot locate a valid address. In those cases, the returned statement remains undelivered in our office.
Why don’t we simply let the Post Office forward them?
Because forwarding the statement may solve the immediate delivery problem without solving the underlying problem: the address on the property record is still wrong.
USPS generally forwards First Class Mail under a permanent Change of Address for 12 months. During months 13 through 18, mail is generally returned to the sender with the new address provided. After that period, the forwarding information may no longer be available through the standard process.
By requiring our statements to be returned to us rather than automatically forwarded, we can identify outdated addresses now, communicate with the property owner, and hopefully prevent future tax statements and other important county correspondence from being delayed or returned.
One important distinction: the Treasurer’s Office cannot make the official address change simply because we find a better address or receive one from the Postal Service. We can use that information to remail the statement, but property owners must update their official mailing address through the Bremer County Auditor’s Office.
It takes some additional work when those statements start coming back to us, but the goal is pretty simple: get the statement delivered and inform the property owner of the process to get the address corrected so it is delivered in the future.
