NCBFAA, AAFA Say Proposed AQI Fee Increases 'Exorbitant' and 'Unfair'
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service needs to rethink “exorbitant” and “unfair” fee increases for agricultural quarantine and inspection services, according to a July 24 letter from 27 trade associations including the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America and the American Apparel & Footwear Association. The agency should withdraw the proposed rules it issued in April on AQI and overtime fee rates (see 14042321) so that industry can review the underlying data, they said.
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The trade associations said the fee increases are impossible to justify to their members. “It is unprecedented and frankly unfair to expect a regulated entity to pay upwards to 200 percent more in user fees over a short period of time,” the letter said. For example, ocean vessels currently pay a maximum of $7,440 per year. But if the fee increases are finalized, “a commercial cargo vessel with a weekly call to the U.S. from the Caribbean, for example, would pay $42,900 (nearly five times the current fee) not including overtime fees,” said the trade groups. “Furthermore, some cruise vessels could pay as much as $600,000 annually,” said the letter.
Part of the problem is that APHIS included overhead costs for its headquarters operations in the fees. Such costs are “’business sustaining,’ and should not be considered AQI program costs at all, said the letter. Another issue is that the proposal fails to account for possible “double counting” of fees. At some ports, CBP has implemented local collection of overtime fees for agricultural services. The proposal only says that the proposed fees would recover CBP costs that are directly charged to AQI activities, including salaries and benefits for CBP agriculture specialists, without mention of any fees CBP already collects, said the trade groups.
The fee increases APHIS proposed in April wouldn’t be the last of the pain for industry either, said the letter. “We are further alarmed that an APHIS official noted during the conference call/webinar on July 9 that the rulemaking could be finalized by January 1, 2015, and that another AQI fee increase rulemaking is planned for FY 2016 or FY 2017,” it said. “Under this scenario, many businesses -- including small entities -- will be forced to absorb 200 plus percent fee increases in less than six months and will face additional fee increases soon thereafter.”