U.S. Customs and Border Protection is preparing to launch its dedicated refund platform for tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, with the system scheduled to go live on April 20 at 8 a.m. EDT.
The timing was confirmed in a court filing made Tuesday before the Court of International Trade. While CBP had already indicated that April 20 was the target date, the latest filing clarified exactly when importers will be able to begin submitting claims.
Ahead of the launch, CBP said it is carrying out intensive testing on the four components of its Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system, known as CAPE, and that primary development work has now been completed.
According to the agency’s website, once an entry is submitted and accepted, refunds are expected to be issued within roughly 60 to 90 days.
All payments will be made electronically, in line with a CBP policy introduced in February. In its filing, the agency said around 82% of entries eligible for IEEPA refunds have already registered for electronic payment. Based on that uptake, CBP expects to deliver approximately $127 billion in refunds tied to tariffs that were struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in February.
Following the Court’s ruling, the Court of International Trade ordered CBP to issue refunds on unpaid IEEPA tariffs for entries that had not yet been liquidated. The court later expanded the order to cover finally liquidated entries as well.
CBP, however, said it will not be able to support that latter functionality in CAPE’s initial launch and will instead build it into future versions of the system.
That means the technical launch date is now clear, but questions remain over how smoothly the platform will perform once large volumes of real-world claims begin entering the system.
Pete Mento, director of global trade advisory services at Baker Tilly, said in a LinkedIn post that CAPE appears to have been designed to make intake straightforward, but he warned that the update offers no sign CBP will be less rigorous once claims are submitted. In his view, the message is essentially to get filings into the system quickly, while decisions on what happens next will come later.
