I debated posting this in GQ, but I don’t think there is an answer.
The Cypriot Postal Service is not allowing any post to the USA (including postcards and letters)… and according to the US Embassy:
*Unfortunately, it is true that the Post Office in Cyprus as well as many other European countries are not accepting packages over 40 grams until December 8, 2010 for security reasons. You can send a letter that weighs less than 40 grams or wait until December 9 to send your package.
Sincerely,
Consular Section
U.S. Embassy, Nicosia *
The 40g limit is being ignored and all mail seems to be blocked. WTF?
If this ends up being common, will the IRS simply accept “I could not file because there is no way to post my tax return from the country I live in”?
dammit, I just sent Christmas presents to my buddy in Romania … I hope he gets them [and their version of customs doesn’t steal out of it again like last year] :mad:
Does anyone else recall that someone actually put explosives in toner cartridges a couple of months back, but they were intercepted before they could either blow a plane apart or blow up a recipient at the Chicago receiving addresses?!
I know it’s de rigeur nowadays to presume that everything Homeland Security does is pointless and ineffectual because of the controversial TSA scan-or-frisk policy. But there really are still people trying to kill Americans (and Europeans, and others) and blow up planes.
I honestly don’t know if temporarily (December 9th is plenty of time for a package from Europe to reach a US destination before Christmas, and I don’t see how income tax filing would be affected) stopping all packages over 40 grams is a reasonable policy or not. But I do know that:
(1) it doesn’t sound either preposterous or groundless to me, as the two sarcastic posters above seem to believe, and
(2) if someone in the US (Homeland Security, Postal Service, or whoever) set a 40 gram temporary limit and someone else overreacted and wouldn’t forward any mail regardless of weight, it’s the latter’s fault and not the former’s when a simple letter or postcard doesn’t go through.
EVERY package posted to Australia is screened and has been for years but without the need for a nine dollar surcharge, this is just ridiculous my opinion.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean that the weight would make it a non-issue. I meant that the date, December 9, would make it a non-issue.
In my experience, I don’t get mailed tax materials (except for the forms themselves) until after New Year’s Day, and I can’t file my taxes until well after New Year’s when I have all my materials at hand.
“Assuming this is still in place at tax time” seems pretty speculative when the date on the table is December 9th. I don’t know about Homeland Security, but I’m fairly confident that the Postal Services (US, Cypriot, or otherwise) don’t want to render themselves even more irrelevant in the modern world than they already are by extending this restriction indefinitely.
AH, but what does that have to do with the TSA, or for that matter Homeland Security? The Postal Service handles that, and the Homeland Security crap is actuall less than the sum of its parts.
