Questions importers actually ask

For a commercial import, yes. CBP will not release the cargo without one, because the bond is the guarantee that the government collects its duties and any penalties even if you do not pay. There are two forms. A single transaction bond covers one entry. A continuous bond covers everything you import for a year, including your ISF filings, and is sized from roughly ten percent of the duties, taxes and fees you paid over the previous twelve months, subject to a minimum CBP sets.

If you import more than three or four times a year, the continuous bond is usually cheaper as well as less trouble. Watch it as duty rates rise: a bond sized against last year of trade can saturate once Section 232 or AD/CVD money starts landing on your entries, and a saturated bond stops releases.

The Importer Security Filing, usually called 10+2, applies to ocean cargo only. Ten data elements come from you, including seller, buyer, manufacturer, ship-to party, country of origin, the tariff number to six digits, the container stuffing location and the consolidator. Two more come from the carrier.

It has to be transmitted no later than 24 hours before the goods are laden aboard the vessel at the foreign port. That deadline is about loading, not arrival, so we need your documents while the container is still overseas. Late or inaccurate filings draw liquidated damages of up to $5,000 per violation, and CBP can hold the container when it lands. Air, truck and rail shipments do not require an ISF. We file it the day the documents reach us.

A customs power of attorney is what allows a broker to sign and transmit entry documents in your name. Without one on file, CBP does not recognise us as acting for you and we cannot file at all, so this is not paperwork we have added on top.

It is specific to us, it gives no access to your bank accounts, and you can revoke it in writing whenever you like. It also does not move liability: the importer of record stays responsible to CBP for the duty and for the accuracy of the entry. That is precisely why we would rather ask you three awkward questions before transmitting than explain a penalty afterwards.

Two different kinds of money end up on one invoice, and it helps to keep them apart. The first is government money we pass straight through: the duty itself, the merchandise processing fee at 0.3464 percent of entered value between a floor and a ceiling CBP adjusts annually, the harbor maintenance fee at 0.125 percent on ocean cargo, plus any Section 232, Section 301, IEEPA or AD/CVD amount that applies. None of that is ours and none of it is negotiable by anybody.

The second is our fee: the entry, additional tariff lines beyond the first few, the ISF, each partner government agency filing, and the bond. What it comes to depends on how many lines your entry runs and how many agencies care about your product, which is why we quote against your actual documents instead of publishing a rate card that would be wrong for most shipments. Send the paperwork and you get a number.

If the entry is filed before arrival and nothing is flagged, release is normally in hand at or shortly after discharge. Ocean entries can go in days ahead of the vessel. Air shipments often clear within hours of the manifest reaching CBP. A truck at a land border can be cleared before the driver gets to the booth.

The delay is almost never the filing itself. It is documents that turn up on the day of arrival, a bond that is not in place, a classification nobody has confirmed, or a hold. Three of those four are entirely avoidable, and the fourth is at least predictable.

First you hear it from us, and you hear which kind of hold it is, because they behave nothing alike. A document review means CBP wants to see the invoice or has issued a request for information, and it is answered on paper. An intensive exam means the container goes to a centralised examination station to be opened and inspected, with the exam and the drayage billed to you and the timing set by the queue at that station.

A partner agency hold from FDA, USDA or EPA is a review of the product rather than the entry, and clears on the agency clock. A hold under a trade remedy or a forced labour authority is a different animal again: it needs documented supply chain evidence, not a phone call. We tell you which one you have, what clearing it will take, and what the terminal is charging you per day while it runs.

Yes, and it is ordinary work here rather than something we hand off. If your product falls within the scope of an antidumping or countervailing duty order, the entry has to carry the correct case numbers and the cash deposit rate in force for your specific producer and exporter on the date of entry.

Two things regularly surprise importers. The rate you post is a deposit, not a final figure: after an administrative review, CBP can assess a different rate on entries filed years earlier and bill you the difference. And scope is decided by the language of the order rather than by your description of the goods, so a product you have imported cleanly for years can be pulled into a case by a scope ruling. We check scope before entry and tell you when your product sits close to a line.

Yes. Drawback refunds up to 99 percent of the duties, taxes and fees paid on goods that are exported again or destroyed, whether they leave unused, get manufactured into something else, or go back as rejected merchandise. You generally have five years from import to file, and substitution rules let you match on the eight digit tariff number rather than tracing the individual article, which makes drawback workable for far more importers than believe it applies to them.

Not every duty comes back. Section 232 duties are not drawback eligible. Section 301 duties generally are. Where an IEEPA action is involved, eligibility depends on the terms of that specific order, so ask before you budget the refund. Claims are electronic, and the recordkeeping is the genuinely hard part.

No. A foreign company can be the importer of record. In place of an EIN it is issued a CBP-assigned identification number, filed on CBP Form 5106, and it needs a customs bond with a US agent named to accept service of process on its behalf. That agent requirement is the piece that catches people out, and it is administrative rather than a barrier. We set both up as part of onboarding.

The commercial invoice, a packing list, the bill of lading or air waybill, and the arrival notice from the carrier or forwarder. Alongside those, your importer of record number, your bond details, and enough product information to classify honestly: what the item is made of, what it does, and where it was made.

For steel and aluminium articles add the country where the metal was melted and poured, which is not the same question as where the article was manufactured and is now the question that decides the Section 232 exposure. Regulated goods need their agency data as well: FDA facility registration and prior notice, EPA forms, TTB permits, Lacey Act declarations and so on.

You are, legally. The importer of record owes CBP reasonable care on classification, valuation and origin, and that obligation does not transfer to the broker by hiring one. What we do is classify the goods, show you the reasoning, and be explicit about where a call is genuinely arguable rather than pretending the tariff is tidier than it is.

Where the answer is worth real money and is not obvious, you can ask CBP for a binding ruling before importing, which settles it in writing. If a filed entry turns out to be wrong, a post summary correction fixes it before liquidation, and a protest is available within 180 days after liquidation. For a pattern of past errors, a prior disclosure is usually far cheaper than waiting to be found.

Either entry by entry, or on a periodic monthly statement where a whole month of entries is paid together by ACH in the middle of the following month. If you file regularly, the statement is worth setting up: one payment instead of dozens, and several weeks of float on money you owe anyway.

You can pay CBP directly from your own ACH account, or we can disburse on your behalf and invoice you. Duty is not something a broker can discount, and a broker who disburses is carrying your money until you pay, which is why payment terms matter to both sides of the relationship.

Liquidation is the final calculation of what an entry owed. Until it happens, everything you paid is a deposit. Most entries liquidate on a routine cycle a little under a year after filing, but CBP can extend that for up to four years, or suspend it entirely while an AD/CVD review runs.

It matters because it is the clock on your money in both directions. After liquidation you have a limited window to protest a rate you disagree with, and CBP can bill you for an increase you were not expecting. We watch liquidation on entries we file instead of assuming the deposit was the end of the story.

Yes. Household effects on a relocation, a single vehicle, a boat, an inherited collection, a trade show shipment coming in under a temporary import bond and leaving again before the clock runs out.

Vehicles carry their own paperwork: EPA form 3520-1 and DOT form HS-7, plus the exemptions that open up once a vehicle is more than 25 years old. A one-off import gets the same filing discipline as a weekly container, on the one condition that the documents genuinely describe what is in the box.