[umanwizard]

Well, not everyone even lives in an incorporated city or town. Rural areas are usually not part of them, for example. So I don't think there are any federal forms that would ask you that. As far as I know they just ask for your address.

For example, the form to apply for a passport is here: https://eforms.state.gov/Forms/ds11.pdf . The only place it asks for city is as part of the mailing address.

In general, the ways individual states decide to divide up their local administration are just not something the federal government cares about. Arizona could decide tomorrow to abolish all its cities and counties and just administer everything centrally, and they'd be perfectly allowed to do that under federal law.

Another example of federal institutions not matching local ones is court districts. The Southern District of New York (i.e., of New York State) contains part of NYC. The Eastern District contains a different part, and also land that is not part of NYC.

[mehrdadn]

> In general, the ways individual states decide to divide up their local administration are just not something the federal government cares about. Arizona could decide tomorrow to abolish all its cities and counties and just administer everything centrally, and they'd be perfectly allowed to do that under federal law.

This isn't the impression I've gotten though? Just looking at tax forms, 1040 literally asks for "home address" on one line, and "city, town or post office, state, and ZIP code" on the next line. They certainly seem to care about the city? Now the problem is my common sense would dictate that the city should be the one used for the mailing address rather than what you officially live in, but that's not what it literally says -- it just says "city, town or post office". And given you're signing under penalty of perjury it seems kind of awful that there should be this kind of ambiguity?

[umanwizard]

Yes, "city" is one of the fields in your postal address, which is not necessarily related to what your particular state decides to call its "cities".

If you live in Phoenix but your postal address says "Glendale, AZ", then you would put "Glendale" on that form.

If you are genuinely confused about this and write "Phoenix" instead, (or, for example, "New York, NY" even though your address says "Brooklyn, NY"), I would be very surprised if any court would convict you of perjury. Your statement having been literally true is an affirmative defense to a perjury charge. The worst that will happen is the IRS won't be able to send you mail.

[dragonwriter]

> So I would be surprised if there is any federal form that requires you to put the "city" you live in, outside the context of a USPS address.

Forms that ask for separate physical and mailing addresses often use the shape of a USPS address for the physical address (including ZIP code), even though many of the fields may not apply. “Physical locations all have addresses shaped like postal addresses” is a common belief that is often reflected in form (and software/DB) design.

[umanwizard]

I would describe the issue here, though, as "Federal government believes everyone has a USPS address (mailing and/or physical)", as opposed to "local political divisions within a state are particularly meaningful to the federal government".

The thrust of my point is the same -- the feds don't ask you to write a city outside the context of an address. The fact that they assume addresses exist is a separate issue, IMO.