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 issued the following releases on commercial trade and related matters:
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 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:
UPS acquired Sandler & Travis Trade Advisory Services (STTAS) on Nov. 30, UPS said in a Dec. 4 news release. STTAS, the consulting and trade compliance arm of the Sandler Travis law and lobbying firm, "will continue to provide its same services, from the same offices with use of the same personnel," STTAS said in a news release. It will also "continue to serve as a resource" for Sandler Travis "on joint client issues as it has in the past." Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.
CBP provided an update related to coming changes to drawback filing that were part of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (see 1603010043). In CBP's November drawback simplification newsletter, the agency mentioned the recent release of new drawback procedures now available in the ACE certification environment for testing and the updated draft Customs and Trade Automated Interface Requirements (CATAIR) (see 1711150046). "After each Sprint review, [the CBP Trade Transformation Office] will conduct Sprint overviews with the [Drawback Working Group] to address technical developments in ACE Drawback programming," CBP said.