U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued guidance this week for how importers may submit IEEPA tariff refund requests through the new Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) tool within the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal.
Rafe Morrissey and Craig Brightup of the International Housewares Association government affairs office in Washington, D.C., provided the following summary of the CBP refund system and how home and housewares importers can initiate their refund claims:
Brokers and Importers of Record (IORs) can submit eligible declarations starting on April 20, 2026. CAPE declarations will be validated, and refunds and interest payments will be consolidated and paid out in one lump sum.
Mass Processing: The CAPE system is designed to consolidate refunds of IEEPA tariffs instead of requiring the processing of refunds on an entry-by-entry basis.
- For accepted entries on the CAPE declaration, all applicable IEEPA HTSUS Chapter 99 numbers will be removed.
- Duties owed will be recalculated as if the IEEPA duties were never owed. The projected refund will be the difference between the duties, taxes, and fees paid on the entry summary and the recalculated total.
- Once the mass processing is complete, unliquidated entries will be set to liquidate 45 days from the CAPE declaration acceptance date, except for entries in suspended, extended or under review liquidation status.
- Liquidated entry summaries will reliquidate the next business day.
Scope of Phase One: Initially, CAPE will only process most entries that are either unliquidated or up to 80 days past their liquidation date. Following review, the entries will be liquidated or reliquidated and refunds issued.
A variety of more complex entries will not be accepted by CAPE in this first phase. These include:
- Entries flagged for Reconciliation, including Entry Type 09
- Entries associated with a drawback claim, including Entry Type 47 and Entry Type 08 USMCA Duty Deferral
- Entries with an Open or Suspended Protest
- Entries without a liquidation status in ACE
- Entries subject to AD/CVD duties
- Entries for which liquidation is final
Refund Timeframe: The notice indicates that “valid [emphasis added] IEEPA refunds will generally be issued within 60 to 90 days following acceptance [emphasis added] of a CAPE Declaration, unless a compliance concern requires further CBP review.”
Note that the qualifications of validity and acceptance leave a lot of uncertainty on actual timing and the volume of refund requests could lead to timeframes longer than 60-90 days from the date of submission.
David Forgue, a partner with Barnes Richardson Global Trade Law, who was featured in IHA’s recent webinar on the tariff refund situation, offered the following observation:
“People who filed blanket ‘IEEPA protests’ and are otherwise within the Phase 1 parameters probably would be better served by relying on the Phase 1 process,” Forgue said. “So, for them, withdrawal makes sense. For people with protests of other issues and IEEPA claims, they need to weigh the risk of losing the other issues they are protesting.
“Otherwise, we continue to believe that Phase 1 represents the entries CBP has the statutory authority to voluntarily reliquidate and that all of the issues we were concerned about with all the other entries remain,” Forgue added. “However, we currently see no reason not to jump into Phase 1 and try to get back what importers can easily and quickly.”
