On March 12, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency laid out an early vision for what importers claiming refunds would need to do after customs updates its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) customs payment system to process the claims. This could be subject to change if Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade sees anything in the process as onerous, but as of March 26 the judge has accepted CBP’s suggested refund process.
The agency has offered information on what it would do to implement refunds, and what it expects of importers seeking refunds, as of that filing.
The CBP is updating ACE with a new Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) function for IEEPA refunds. This will include:
- A claim portal
- Mass processing (for calculating duties owed after subtracting IEEPA ones)
- Review and liquidation/reliquidation of duties paid (including calculation of interest)
- Refunds (sent electronically to a U.S. bank account)
Importers must register for electronic refunds in ACE following guidelines laid out in this interim final rule, which took effect on Feb. 6. According to the CBP official, only a small fraction of entities who were importers of record for IEEPA tariffs have registered for electronic refunds. Third-party agents (customs brokers, trade attorneys) designated as importers of record will receive the refund if they have followed the process laid out in that interim rule.
Importers claiming IEEPA refunds will have to upload a comma-separated values (CSV) file containing a list of the entry summaries for which they are requesting IEEPA refunds.
From the March 12 update to the court: “File validations will ensure that the refund request contains all required information, that the information is properly formatted, that the submitter is the importer of record (IOR) for the listed entries or the authorized broker that filed the entry summaries on the IOR’s behalf, and that the CSV file itself is not corrupted.
If a submission fails any part of the file validation series, ACE will reject the CAPE Declaration submission.
The system will identify any errors, viewable to the importer filing for a refund, so as to allow for corrections. However, to correct those errors, the importer will need to edit the file and resubmit it as a new entry.
Contacts:
Managing Director, Tax Legislative Affairs Leader
Washington National Tax Office
Grant Thornton Advisors LLC
Storme Sixeas serves as the Tax Legislative Affairs leader for Grant Thornton’s Washington National Tax Office.
Manager, Tax Legislative Affairs Washington National Tax Office
Grant Thornton Advisors LLC
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