USPS Form 1583, Explained Line by Line

PS Form 1583 is one page long, has been in use for decades, and is the single most common reason somebody drives to a mailbox store twice. It is not a complicated document. It is just a document that assumes you already know what it is asking.

The blank form is free from the Postal Service at about.usps.com/forms/ps1583.pdf, and the rules governing what a store must do with it once completed are in the Domestic Mail Manual section 508. Reading the form once before you go is worth more than any advice on this page.

What the form is for

Its formal title is "Application for Delivery of Mail Through Agent". You are authorising a private business to receive mail addressed to you, and the Postal Service wants a record of who that person is. That framing explains every section: it is an identity record, not a rental agreement.

The sections, and what they want

Who you are, and where you actually live

The form asks for your name and your home address. Not the box. The physical address where you live. People coming to a mailbox precisely because they are between homes find this uncomfortable, but there is no way around it: the address you write here has to be supported by one of your two identification documents.

If you are genuinely between addresses, use the last address where you received mail and be ready to explain it. Stores see this constantly.

Every name that will receive mail

This is the section that causes the most trouble later. The form asks you to list the names of every person and every business that will receive mail at the box. A store is supposed to refuse mail addressed to a name that is not on the form.

So list everything now: your legal name and the version you actually use, a spouse or partner if they will get mail there, your LLC's registered name, any trading name, a maiden name that old accounts still use. Adding one later means filing an updated form, which usually means another trip.

If the mail is for a business

The form asks for the type of business and, in many cases, evidence of its registration. What the store wants to see varies: a filed certificate of formation, a business licence, a state registration printout. If your entity is new, bring whatever the state sent you when it was formed. The Small Business Administration's guide to registering a business explains which document that is in each state.

Identification

Two forms, and they do different jobs.

• Primary, with a photograph. A current state driver licence or ID card, a passport, a passport card, a military ID. Unexpired. The name must match the form exactly, which means if your licence says Jonathan and you wrote Jon, write Jonathan.
• Secondary. A vehicle registration, a voter registration card, a lease, an insurance policy or card, a utility bill. Stores vary in what they accept, so call ahead if yours is unusual.

The trap: at least one of these needs to show the home address you wrote on the form. Two documents that both show your old address will fail, and this is by far the commonest cause of a second trip.

The signature and the witness

You sign in front of somebody. That is the point of the exercise, and it is why you should not fill in and sign the form at home before you arrive.

Two routes exist. In person at the store, where a staff member checks your identification and witnesses the signature, is how most walk-in signups work. Notarisation is the other route, and it is how essentially every remote signup works, because the store never sees you. Remote online notarisation has been authorised in a growing majority of states, which is why virtual mailbox services can now onboard you entirely from a phone. Which states, and under what conditions, is tracked by the National Association of Secretaries of State, whose members administer notary commissions.

The four reasons applications come back

1. Neither ID shows the home address on the form. Fix it by bringing something that does, or by writing the address your documents actually show.
2. An expired document. Expired is expired, even by a week.
3. Name mismatch. The form, the primary ID and the box agreement all have to agree.
4. A missing signature from a second person. If two adults will receive mail at the box, both are listed and both, in practice, present identification.

What happens to the form afterwards

The store keeps it. It has to, for as long as you hold the box and for a period after you close it, and it has to produce the record on request from postal inspectors. That is a genuine obligation with real consequences for the store, and it is worth knowing because it also means the store is holding copies of your identity documents. Ask how those copies are stored. A good answer exists; an evasive one tells you something.

When anything changes, the form has to be updated: a new home address, a new name on the box, a new business trading name. Most stores handle this in five minutes if you bring the documents.

Work through it before you go

The Form 1583 checklist on this site walks the whole sequence in order and saves your progress in your browser, which is more useful than it sounds when you are standing at a counter trying to remember whether your insurance card counts.