U.S. Government Launches New Phase Of IEEPA Tariff Refund Process

The U.S. government has entered the second phase in its process to refund the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs that the Supreme Court of the United States struck down earlier this year.

As Connecting the Dots reported at the time, in April the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) launched a portal through which companies could request refunds of the IEEPA penalties they paid. The refund process, called Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE), was to be deployed in phases. Phase one, which was launched in April, was limited to certain unliquidated entries and certain entries within 80 days of liquidation.

The second phase was launched on June 29. (Read the CBP’s notice at this link.)

With this phase underway, importers and brokers may now submit entries for shipments that had been  awaiting reconciliation of their final duty calculations through the CAPE portal. The latest functionality accounts for roughly $28.7 billion in refunds, Supply Chain Dive reported. Another phase, which could come in late July, will include functionality for processing finally liquidated entries, which should account for $11.4 billion, or 6.9 percent, of IEEPA payments made.

As a reminder, requesting refunds of IEEPA duties requires the following summarized actions:

• Importers of Record and authorized Customs brokers to have an established ACE Secure Data Portal account (ACE Portal account);
• Recipients to use the ACE Portal account to provide CBP with bank account information; and
• Importers of Record and authorized Customs brokers to submit CAPE Declarations in the ACE Portal.

For more information, visit the CPB’s webpage dedicated to IEEPA refunds.