The trials and tribulations of mailing my 2025 return from abroad
I tried to mail my tax return at my local post office on Friday but failed. The postage machine said there was no service to the United States. I asked a clerk at the bureau, and she confirmed what the machine had said: delivery services to the US were suspended. She told me to go online to the postal service's website. Curious, I tried my luck at another post office and was told the same thing.
I went to the website and found a way to buy postage for my envelope. I bought my stamps, which had to be printed out and glued to my envelope. After completely the transaction, a list of steps appeared for mailing the envelope. Step 3 said that I had to fill out a customs declaration form online.
I clicked the link for the form and started filling it out. I reached a page for entering the address of the recipient. In the Country field, there was a dropdown list of countries that started with Afghanistan. I scrolled down through the list to find "United States." It wasn't in the list.
Every package sent from this country to the United States has to include a customs declaration form. Currently, the only way to buy postage for a package to the United States is through the post office's website. And the website's customs declaration form does not include "United States" in its list of countries. (Clarification: It does not include the local name for the United States.)
One cannot send a package to the United States through our local postal service. And if one could, the minimum postage rate is about $40. If you want to send a one-ounce package to the States, for example, you have to pay $40 for postage.
And it gets worse. There is no postal service for sending packages. However, if there were a service, the sender would have to calculate the US import tax (tariff) for the package and pay it through the website, so that it could then be given to the United States. The tariff has to be paid here as part of the postage transaction.
Back to my story, I searched through the website to see whether envelopes were exempt from this requirement. Buried in the middle of a page was a one-sentence paragraph that said envelopes like mine did not have to include a customs declaration form. Yesterday, I took the envelope, bearing its website stamps, to a local post office and dropped it into the mailbox, as instructed by the steps. In theory, it should make its way to the United States. In theory...