U.S. Customs and Border Protection has established a four-step process to deliver refunds to importers for International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court last month, according to a Thursday filing with the Court of International Trade.
The agency said it is progressing on phased development of a new capability within its Automated Commercial Environment, a digital portal that finalizes entries, that would calculate and deliver refunds to importers for charges incurred under the now defunct levies.
The Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, otherwise known as CAPE, consists of four steps, including claim submission, mass processing, review and liquidation/reliquidation, and refund delivery.
CBP makes progress on IEEPA tariff refund process
For the first step, importers must submit refund requests through a dedicated claim portal, which will trigger two validation measures to ensure all required information is provided and accurate. Should an entry fail to meet specifications, an importer can review any issues and resubmit, in some instances via a separate claim.
Once a request is submitted and validated, the system will remove all IEEPA tariffs from entries and run standard validation procedures to calculate total duties owed without the IEEPA levies. This process is in the earliest stage of development of the four stages, with the agency saying it is currently focused on the automated entry summary update process.
After entries clear mass processing, the system will automatically schedule liquidation for “a specified number of days” from the acceptance date, although it did not disclose what that number would be. During this stage, the system will also update underlying entries to reflect the new total duties paid and calculate interest.
Following liquidation, entries will move forward to the CAPE-specific refund process, which will consolidate refunds by liquidation date and electronically transfer funds back to importers.
Last week, the Court of International Trade ordered CBP to liquidate unprocessed entries and reliquidate yet-to-be finalized entries “without regard” for the IEEPA tariffs, marking the first court direction toward refunds.
However, CBP said it could not immediately comply with the court order due to shortcomings of the technology and operations it was working to address. The agency added that it planned to develop and implement a process to issue refunds within 45 days. In response, the court suspended the original order while requesting a progress report from CBP by Thursday.
Following Thursday’s report, the court extended the order’s stay and called for CBP to deliver another report on its progress by 2 p.m. ET on March 19.
