US launches tariff refund system as thousands of importers line up

The refund system set up to allow companies to recover illegally collected tariffs from the United States government has gone live as thousands of companies rushed to file claims.

“So far, so good” – though the system is a little glitchy, said Jay Foreman, CEO of toymaker Basic Fun, which had a team in its “war room” at its headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida, ready to start filing when the system went live at 8am US Eastern time (12:00 GMT) on Monday.

Foreman said the system didn’t crash as some had feared it might under the onslaught of attempted submissions – but rather would sometimes not allow an upload and force them to retry. The company has over 500 files it needs to upload to the system, although the system permits these to be uploaded in batches.

“However, if you load too many or the system is too busy, it will kick them back,” Foreman said in an email about how the process was working in the early moments. “We’ve got over 50 percent of our invoices loaded so far. We are hoping in the next few hours to have them all loaded. I’m very happy we got this process started early.”

Companies contacted by the Reuters news agency in recent days expressed concerns about the durability of the new system, created by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in response to a court order that it prepare to return up to $166bn to importers.

The US Supreme Court in February struck down the tariffs that President Donald Trump pursued under a law meant for use in national emergencies, handing the Republican president a stinging defeat.

In court filings, customs officials said as of April 9, some 56,497 importers had completed the necessary steps to receive electronic refunds, an amount totalling $127bn, or more than three-quarters of the total eligible to be refunded. More than 330,000 importers paid the tariffs at issue on 53 million shipments of imported goods.

Companies must submit declarations listing the goods on which they collectively put billions of dollars towards the import taxes the court subsequently struck down. If CBP approves a claim, it will take 60-90 days for a refund to be issued, the agency said.

The government expects to process refunds in phases, however, focusing first on more recent tariff payments. Any number of technical factors and procedural issues could delay an importer’s application, so any reimbursements that businesses plan to make to customers would likely have to trickle down slowly.

It is unclear whether getting a refund claim into the portal as soon as possible will impact how quickly it’s processed, but many companies decided to not take the risk of waiting.

A CBP spokesman said on Friday that the agency created a system that will “efficiently process refunds, pursuant to court order, for importers and brokers who paid” the duties.

This is the latest twist in a drawn-out battle over emergency tariffs collected over the past year as Trump seeks to restructure US trade relations. The constantly shifting tariffs roiled global business as companies rushed to move supply chains to avoid them as well as figure out who would ultimately pay the taxes.