CBP to Enforce Some Type 86 Requirements 'Post Audit,' Will Allow Nominal Consignees to Issue POAs
CBP will not be enforcing its power of attorney (POA) requirements and one-person, one-shipment limits on an entry-by-entry basis as it conducts its Type 86 pilot of filing de minimis shipments via the ACE Automated Broker Interface, said Jim Swanson, CBP director-cargo and security controls, during a trade call held Sept. 26. The agency will still apply existing regulations on those areas in the pilot, but that will come in the “post-audit environment,” not at the time of entry, Swanson said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The one person, one shipment per day limit will not be enforced based on importer of record numbers transmitted on Type 86 entries, Swanson said. For one, the IOR number is a conditional field that’s only mandated when partner government agency (PGA) data is required on an entry. And the limit applies to the actual consignee, not to the importer of record or nominal consignee, so a single broker could act as IOR for 100 buyers and 100 sellers on a given day without a violation, he said. “We recognize that the IOR number is not going to be an accurate indicator” of the actual person receiving the shipment, Swanson said.
And while brokers will need to maintain “some level of POA” to have authorization to file Type 86 entries, CBP rulings do permit the nominal consignee to issue POAs, Swanson said. That could be the freight forwarder, the carrier or the broker-filer, he said. CBP earlier said it intended to clarify POA requirements for Type 86 entries, and that the agency does not intend for brokers to have to get thousands of powers of attorney for low value, e-commerce shipments (see 1909120054).
Though the new pilot, which launches Sept. 28 (see 1908120019), is tailored for de minimis shipments with PGA requirements, filers of certain goods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration but exempt from PGA requirements for low value shipments may want to keep filing Section 321 via manifest (see 1707030044), Swanson said. Entries of cosmetics, dinnerware, non-medical radiation-emitting devices and certain foods stored in air-tight containers at room temperature that use Type 86 could still require a disclaim or PGA data as a result of tariff flagging in ACE. “Our recommendation is you continue to file those via the manifest route,” Swanson said. “It’s one of the things we’re working on, and we know FDA is re-evaluating that as well.”