This Is What The Government Shutdown Means For You

The IRS will continue to collect taxes. The 12 million people who filed for an extension on their 2012 tax returns have until Oct. 15 to file.

Pell Grants and federal direct student loans will continue, but other functions of the U.S. Department of Education will come to a halt as more than 90% of the department's employees are furloughed.

According to the Department of Education, a “delay in Department obligations and payments beyond one week would severely curtail the cash flow to school districts, colleges and universities, and vocational rehabilitation agencies that depend on the Department’s funds to support their services.”

Sorry.

The U.S. Postal Service is an independent agency of the federal government. It hasn't directly received taxpayer dollars since the 1980s.

The State Department says it has some money outside of what Congress would have given them, and has said it will do as much as it can before it runs out of money. So if you need a passport, you should do that now.

The Patent and Trademark Office has enough funds to last for about four more weeks.

State parks and private museums are still open.

But it's nowhere near a guarantee. Congress voted to back-pay federal employees after the last shutdown but some have suggested this Congress may not be willing to do so.

According to the Office of Personnel Management: "Executive branch-wide standards of ethical conduct and rules regarding outside employment continue to apply when an individual is furloughed (specifically, the executive branch-wide standards of ethical conduct (the standards), at 5 CFR part 2635). In addition, there are specific statutes which prohibit certain outside activities, and agency-specific supplemental rules that require prior approval of, and sometimes prohibit, outside employment."

Read more about how the military is affected by the shutdown here.

Vincent Gray, mayor of Washington, D.C., originally released a shutdown contingency plan that listed what services were essential and would continue during a shutdown. However, on Wednesday, in a letter to the Office of Management and Budget, he wrote that all D.C. government operations were essential.