Drawback

Accelerated payment for processing of drawback claims under new Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act drawback procedures will be allowed by CBP after the effective date of final regulations, a CBP spokesman said. The agency "is on track to deliver TFTEA drawback in ACE on February 24, 2018 as scheduled," he said. "In the absence of a final rule, CBP will not be granting accelerated payments for TFTEA drawback claims. Once the final rule is effective, accelerated payment will be granted and TFTEA drawback claims will be processed." The absence of accelerated payments means that the initial drawback claim liquidations could take up to a year (see 1801250034).

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:​

CBP will not use accelerated payment for processing claims under the new drawback procedures until the associated regulations become final, Sandler Travis' Michael Cerny, who chairs the Trade Support Network’s drawback working group, said in a blog post. The agency is required to begin accepting drawback claims under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act as of Feb. 24 and is in the process of issuing associated rules. "Claimants filing for drawback under the more advantageous TFTEA provisions will have to wait months, if not longer, to obtain their refunds," Cerny said.

CBP announced the availability for testing of several specific types of “dummy” entry summaries in the ACE certification environment for new drawback procedures under the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, in a Jan. 18 CSMS message. The entry summaries, prepared by members of the trade community, “should be used as the underlying imports on your drawback claim,” CBP said. “These entries have been loaded in addition to the original entry submitted to the certification environment.” Entry types covered by the dummy summaries include “air certification,” “bed-in-a-bag,” “compound duty,” “generic for unused or manufacturing,” “petroleum derivatives,” “Puerto Rico,” “sought element” and “vessel.” “Each filer will initially be given a maximum of 25 entries for use for a specific entry type requested,” CBP said.

CBP is seeking comments by March 20 on an existing information collection related to the drawback process regulations, it said in a notice. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the information collected and a decrease of the estimated burden hours associated with the collection.

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:​

CBP issued a pair Federal Register notices on its previously announced Feb. 24 deadline for drawback and reconciliation in ACE. On that date, drawback and reconciliation in the legacy Automated Commercial System will be decommissioned. “All reconciliation entries” on or after Feb. 24 “must be filed in ACE regardless of whether the underlying entry was filed in ACS or ACE and regardless of whether it is a replacement, substitution or follow-up to a reconciliation entry originally filed in ACS,” CBP said. ACE will also become the only authorized system for drawback entries beginning Feb. 24, the agency said.

CBP is seeking comments by Feb. 7 on an existing information collection for free entry of returned American products, it said in a notice. CBP proposes to extend the expiration date of this information collection with no change to the information collected or to the estimated burden hours associated with the collection.

The Treasury Department published its fall 2017 regulatory agenda for CBP. The agenda doesn't include any new rulemakings involving trade. Previously listed rulemakings, including a proposal to update to the (a)(1)(A) list of records required for the entry of merchandise and changes to drawback regulations, continue to be on the agenda. The Department of Homeland Security also issued its regulatory agenda (see 1712150011).

CBP issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:​