An audit identified nine areas in which the USPS “is either uncompensated or undercompensated,” most of them related to government services for which it “does not have direct control over pricing or compensation” and further “does not have a strategy to receive additional funding.”
For example, law requires the USPS to provide services to remote locations in Alaska but is not allowed to charge a higher rate to account for the higher costs, for a five-year loss of $460 million, it said. Similarly, the USPS is bound by a post-World War II treaty to provide mailing services to certain Pacific islands, for which it is to be reimbursed by the Interior Department. However, over 2015-2019 the USPS was paid only $11 million of the $59 million in costs because its “strategy to request reimbursement from the Department of Interior has not been effective.”