The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports today that UPS’s completely “voluntary” letter-writing campaign violates lobbying disclosure laws if the financial cost of the campaign goes unreported by the company in their next quarterly disclosure report.

Which means that we won’t know until October 20th, when their next report is released, exactly what portion of the cost of mailing a package with UPS is being used in UPS’s rent seeking scheme against FedEx—-a cost that is apparently legally required to be reported in their L2 lobbying activity disclosure report.

But even if UPS discloses the cost in lost productivity and even if the campaign wasn’t actually voluntary, it is unlikely that there will be any serious consequences for UPS, according to Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, quoted in the article. There is “very little scrutiny, much less enforcement,” of the financial disclosure in these cases.

We may just never know how much it has already cost us, but if UPS succeeds in pulling FedEx down to their level, it will definitely cost us more.