§ 17.025.Assessment of Postage Cost for Mail Service

A small administrative provision that removes a real friction from service by mail.

Where a public official is required or permitted by law to serve legal process by mail — including process in a suit for delinquent taxes — the official may either collect advance payment for the actual cost of the postage, or assess the expense of postage as costs.

The choice between the two matters to the official, not the litigant. Advance collection means the office is never out of pocket; assessing as costs means the expense is recovered at the end, from whoever bears the costs of suit.

Subsection (b) confirms these charges are additional. They come on top of the other charges allowed by law for services performed by the official serving the process, so a service fee and the postage are separate items rather than one bundled charge.

The express mention of delinquent tax suits is the clue to why the section exists. Tax suits are served by mail in volume, often against many defendants at once, and without express authority a tax office would be absorbing postage across thousands of files.

"Actual cost" is a limit as well as an authorisation. The official may recover what the postage cost, not a rounded administrative figure.

The section says nothing about who ultimately bears the expense where costs are assessed — that follows the ordinary rules on costs, which generally fall on the losing party.