IEEPA Tariff Refunds: Here's How to Claim Yours Now

0:04 Stephen Brown

Tariff refunds are real and they are now available, but it's a process that ecommerce businesses need to start working on now.

Welcome to the Ecommerce Finance Podcast. I'm Stephen Brown with LedgerGurus, and with me today I have Stacy Walker, our Director of Growth, and we are going to talk about IEEPA tariff refunds.

Stacy, welcome back to the podcast.

0:25 Stacy Walker

Thanks for having me, Stephen.

0:27 Stephen Brown

Let's just dive in and get to the information, because there is money out there for people that have been impacted by tariffs, which most ecommerce brands were.

0:37 Stacy Walker

Yeah, for sure. Well, let's start at the beginning then, Stephen. Tell me what's being refunded.

0:41 Stephen Brown

So last year you had the Liberation Day, and the legal authority that was used was the IEEPA, or International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This was used to enforce a bunch of tariffs. It was a law that gave the president some emergency powers.

And this went to the court. And in February the Supreme Court ruled that the IEEPA, I'm going to use that because the full name is hard to say, not that IEEPA isn't. The Supreme Court ruled that the IEEPA tariff authority was unconstitutional. And so those were ruled unconstitutional, and duties and tariffs imposed by IEEPA are eligible for a refund.

1:30 Stephen Brown

The Court of International Trade, which was the last court before the Supreme Court, followed up. They got in the face of Customs and Border Protection and said, you need to refund it, because they didn't want to deal with a bunch of lawsuits, the lawsuits were already starting to pile up.

Customs and Border Protection said, this is going to be too hard. And they said, you guys have computers, use them. And so they did. So for the last couple of weeks they built a system. It's called CAPE, and that's what they're using to do refunds.

2:00 Stacy Walker

Wow, that's so interesting. Tell me, what is CAPE and why does it even matter?

2:07 Stephen Brown

So CAPE stands for the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries. You've got to love these acronyms, they're wild.

So this is a subsystem they've built into one of their main systems called ACE, the Automated Commercial Environment system. It's a subsystem that you can go in to use and do the tariff refunds. And they spent a couple of weeks working on it, and it went live, so people can now start getting refunds.

2:40 Who qualifies

Stacy Walker

Interesting. So who actually can get a refund? Who qualifies?

2:46 Stephen Brown

So this is a really important thing that people need to know. Are they the importer of record? And I think smaller sellers might not even know.

There are two ways to import products. Well, there are actually multiple ways. But the importer of record, sometimes that's the manufacturer. There were some things talking about DDR, and I can't remember what DDR means, but you could have your manufacturer be the importer of record, and they would be responsible for all the duties and tariffs and all that. And that was one thing that was being pushed during this tariff regime.

3:20 Stephen Brown

Most people are probably the importer of record, even if they're using a customs broker. Like the business I have co-ownership in, Solé Toscana, we use an importer and they gathered our stuff, but we were the importer of record.

Whoever is the importer of record is going to be eligible for the refund, and they're going to have to get that through this CAPE system, which is a subset of the ACE portal, the Automated Commercial Environment system. That is how the importer of record will get the refunds, electronically.

3:57 Who needs to be involved

Stacy Walker

Okay, perfect. So then who inside the company needs to be involved?

4:03 Stephen Brown

It could be a few people. I would say the most important person inside the company is whoever has been responsible for the import part of the supply chain. The person who's been working with either the customs broker or the importer to get that done.

Like in the case of our business, we sent our importer a bunch of information, they took care of the rest, even though we were the importer of record. But my partner is the one who did that. In every company there's probably somebody who's done that. They should be involved.

4:40 Stephen Brown

You may need to get your finance team involved. You need to chase down those duty reports, make sure you know what is eligible for being refunded. Those are the key players I would say that should be involved.

4:52 Timing and liquidation

Stacy Walker

Okay. So when does all of this happen or start, and how long are they saying it will be until people get their money back?

5:03 Stephen Brown

So CAPE, that subsystem, again let me see if I can find the acronym here. CAPE, the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries system. Phase one launched on April 20th, 2026. So it's live now.

Now, phase one only covers entries within 80 days of liquidation, and unliquidated entries, which is a funny term, we'll talk about that. There are some other qualifications that they're going to do, but those are the principal ones.

And what I'm reading is it's going to take 60 to 90 days once your application has been submitted to get the money back.

5:54 Stacy Walker

Okay. So then take a minute and tell sellers, what does liquidation mean in plain English in this situation?

6:04 Stephen Brown

Liquidation is basically where Customs and Border Protection finalizes that import entry. And phase one is focusing on a subset of recently liquidated entries and unliquidated entries.

Again, there's a lot of confusion here. My guess is there are going to be some things you'll be able to get moving right away, and some things that are going to take a little bit longer.

6:33 How to file, and what's going wrong right now

Stacy Walker

Yeah, I think anything with the government tends to be that way. So if I was a business owner and I wanted to file, where would I go to file, and how would I track the progress of it?

6:46 Stephen Brown

So the ACE portal. If you do a search for CBP ACE you can usually find it. That is where you're going to get to the CAPE system. Let me just do it real quick. CBP ACE. I'll get you the exact, it is ace.cbp.gov. So CAPE actually lives inside of that ACE portal.

7:15 Stephen Brown

And so then one of the first things you've got to do is get your ACE account set up, if you haven't. And what I'm finding is, we didn't have one, and it's a little bit tricky because you might have had an importer help you get things set up. So you've got to go in and be like, hey, what information did I get them? How do I get in the system?

What I'm hearing from some customers is this system's going really slow. Surprise, surprise. It's getting a lot of traffic. And so you've got to go through getting set up with, I'm told, the same email that you used to file all the import records.

8:00 Stephen Brown

And so in our case and some other customers I've worked with, they've never set up an ACE account, but somebody submitted that information to Customs and Border Protection. So that's the first thing that people should start working on right away, with either their customs broker or importer or whoever it was.

If you are the importer of record, that's important. If you're not the importer of record, it's not going to matter, you're not going to get the refund. If you've been letting your manufacturers be the importer of record, then they're the ones who get a benefit from that. But if you have been the one paying the duties, and you'll know, then you are the importer of record and you will want to get set up in the ACE portal.

8:30 Stacy Walker

So Stephen, where are the refunds being deposited for the business owners?

8:35 Stephen Brown

So right now Customs and Border Protection is saying they're only going to do electronic refunds, which is great, because you're not going to have to look for some random check out there.

So when you get in there you're going to have to set up your bank information for refunds. Whatever bank account you set up is where the refunds will go. And again, what they're saying is it's going to take like 60 to 90 days. So on one hand this is money that you weren't planning on, which is going to be awesome, but it's going to take some time to get to it.

9:08 Stacy Walker

So if I was an operator, besides just the free money idea, why do I care about chasing this down? It sounds like it's going to be a bit of a hassle.

9:21 Stephen Brown

These tariffs, depending on the size of your business, I'd say even small sellers, it's thousands to tens of thousands. For larger sellers it's tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. And for much larger sellers it could be millions of dollars that you've already paid that you're going to get back.

So it's worth the time to go out and chase for this money. I would say everybody should be working on this, keeping it on their radar, because it's money that is yours to get back, but it's not automatic. You're going to have to put the work in to do it.

9:57 Stacy Walker

Okay. So we've talked about how you can get it and what you have to do for it. But let's do like a bulleted step one, step two. How does an importer actually do this?

10:11 Stephen Brown

I haven't gone through this process beginning to end, but I wanted to do this episode anyway because there's enough information that's getting out there that I think it's authoritative.

So one, you've got to get set up in the ACE portal, you've got to set up your ACE account. You've got to get your bank information set up so you can get the refunds. You're going to have to gather all the eligible entry numbers and information. And it sounds like you're going to have to create a CSV, which is a very crude spreadsheet, following Customs and Border Protection's CAPE template rules. So there's going to be a process there.

10:50 Stephen Brown

Then you're going to upload a CAPE declaration and monitor that it gets accepted. And then once it gets accepted, you just track payment and make sure that the payment gets received.

So it's a little bit harrowing for, well, somebody who's used to doing this kind of import stuff, my guess is it's not too much different. But if you've been hands-off, allowing your importer or your customs broker to do all the things, and now you've got to get in and get dirty, this might be a little bit much.

11:27 Stacy Walker

Yeah, I can see how it would feel overwhelming for sure. So I know you haven't finished the process for Solé Toscana, but I know you've been heavily involved in it. Tell me, what are some of the top issues that you're hearing about right now?

11:41 Stephen Brown

The issue we're running into, and I'm hearing, is getting that ACE account set up is a little bit of a pain, because you're like, I don't remember what I sent my importer.

I have another customer who's having issues with email verification. I think that system's just getting hammered. And so just getting set up is a little bit of a slog.

12:05 Stephen Brown

I have been reading and hearing that people that are set up in there, they're seeing a lot of timeout errors. So I think the system's just getting hammered, and that's probably going to work its way through over the next few weeks.

I'm sure there's going to be some errors in the way that you upload that CAPE declaration.

12:24 Stephen Brown

And so there's a part of me that's like, I doubt that most people were planning on this money, and now it's real. So I'm of the position of, unless you're absolutely desperate to get that money, maybe wait a little bit. There's probably going to be more information that's going to come out, more documentation, plus the system will get solidified. But then jump on it and start working your way through the system.

12:57 Stacy Walker

So if I'm an owner, how am I going to handle forecasting, knowing this is coming?

12:57 Stephen Brown

I would not plan on it. To me this is free money that you weren't planning on, so I wouldn't count on it until you actually get it.

The way we're thinking about it is, cool, here's some working capital that we could really use. But I wouldn't earmark it for anything today, because it's a little bit unpredictable how quickly you're going to get it.

13:25 How to account for it

Stacy Walker

Tell me from an accounting perspective, where is the money going to be accounted for in the books?

13:35 Stephen Brown

That's a good question.

So from a tax perspective, technically it would be a refund of duties. Which usually, if the accounting is done right, that hits your landed product costs and comes onto your profit and loss when you sell product.

The challenge is some of these tariffs were in 2025, in fact a big chunk of them. And if you've filed your taxes already, then your books are closed. You can't go apply that to last year.

14:20 Stephen Brown

You technically could apply some of that money if you wanted to do the accounting work, but it's tricky because landed product costs, we've talked about that, there's a lot that goes into it.

And so you're probably going to apply it as a refund, and most likely, depending on how much effort you or your accountant wants to go through, it may just be other income. Or if you have the ability and care to go into it, you may apply it as a reduction in cost of goods sold, because technically that's what it is.

14:50 Stephen Brown

But because we're talking about money from a previous period, which you may have already filed taxes on, you're just going to recognize it in this year and probably do it as other income. Or you could recognize it as a refund to cost of goods sold, but it's a little bit misleading because it's covering a one-time refund for multiple periods of cost of goods sold.

15:08 Stephen Brown

Because of that, income's going to go up. There will be potential taxability on this income, because you're going to have this lump sum of income.

You may be able to do some fancy accounting to reduce your tax exposure, but it's not going to be easy accounting. So if you expect your accountant to just wave a magic wand and make this not taxable, it's not quite that simple. But it's technically doable.

15:35 Stacy Walker

Okay. So assume I'm an operator that's listening to this and is feeling a little overwhelmed from all of the things. What would you say are three things that I could do right now to start moving forward with it?

15:50 Stephen Brown

Number one is you've got to get access to the ACE portal. And I hope this doesn't shut people down because it's hard, but I'm like, you're doing complex things, just lean into one more thing, it'll be worth your time.

So you've got to get your ACE portal. You've got to get your bank information set up. And then you've got to go through that CAPE declaration, which I do think could be a little bit harrowing.

16:20 Stephen Brown

Maybe your importer will help you with that. Maybe your customs broker will help you with that. I'm sure there'll be people out there that will be helpful. We're going to try to be helpful.

But I'm trying to decide, as we're going through this process ourselves with Solé Toscana, I'm trying to see how helpful we can be coming from a finance background in this process.

16:48 Stacy Walker

That was going to be my next question. Will LedgerGurus be helping our clients and others with it? It sounds like we will, to an extent, depending on how complicated it gets.

17:01 Stephen Brown

To the extent that we are able. I think a customs broker and importer are going to be key resources. I don't know how knowledgeable they're going to be around this process, but they are probably the most likely expert.

We're going to try. There's a piece of this equation that we can help with, and we're good with dealing with lame government portals. [unclear] But we're going to need the support of the customer and or the importer, because there's a lot of information that doesn't make it to your finance team.

17:39 Stephen Brown

I think the best combo is the finance team and the supply chain operations team. But you're probably still going to need to lean on that customs broker or importer who aren't in the company. That combination is probably the best ones to navigate through this, because of the obtuse nature of these kinds of systems.

18:00 Refund trolls and how to avoid surprises

Stacy Walker

Okay. So if I'm somebody who usually has my broker handle everything, do I still need to care about this? Or can I just wash my hands of it and assume it's being taken care of by them?

18:11 Stephen Brown

I think you're going to be the one who's going to have to care.

What we're seeing with our importers, they're not coming to us, we're going to them. So I don't know if there's an economic incentive for them to help you. You're going to probably have to hit them up and say, hey, I need this, can you help me? The smart ones I would hope would be going out to help people get refunds.

18:36 Stacy Walker

The thing you're worried about, tell me.

18:41 Stephen Brown

I'll tell you what I'm worried about the most. What we saw during COVID with the Paycheck Protection Program loans and the EIDL loans and some other things.

There were these, we call them PPP trolls. There were people that were just setting up businesses and they would take like 30% of the loan, or the EIDL, it was basically a tax credit of sorts. They were taking a big portion of that for stuff that really did not merit that level of cost.

19:10 Stephen Brown

And then the other thing we saw is some of those people got the money and they disappeared. Sometimes they filed requests on very shaky grounds, and then they're off in the Bahamas or wherever, just living it up.

I imagine you're going to start seeing those types pop up. And I would say don't work with those people, unless it's the only way you feel like you can get through this.

19:38 Stephen Brown

I have a feeling there are going to be more reputable customs brokers, potentially accountants. Again, it's kind of this gray area that nobody really owns. It's kind of customs, but I'm not sure if they really do this. Importers probably are like, this isn't my thing. But people that are familiar with the ACE portal are the good candidates.

But there are going to be people that are going to figure out how to do this, and they're going to try and charge an arm and a leg. And you'll be like, well, I wasn't planning on getting that money anyway, and you'll be tempted to go with them, because they may be very good.

20:06 Stephen Brown

The problem I have with those types of businesses is they probably will get the refund, I don't expect too much fraud. But they have no reputation. They'll pop up out of nowhere and they'll disappear in a year. So let's say there are any issues with your refund. Are they going to be around?

It just seems like every time there's one of these programs, there's this sub-industry that pops up and then disappears, and they charge an arm and a leg, and they put your business at risk. So I would generally avoid those types if possible, and work with people where you have an ongoing relationship. Those people may be faster than the rest of us, but they're not going to be here in a year or two.

20:50 Stacy Walker

Yeah, I agree. So this isn't automatic, right? People have to initiate the process and get started.

21:05 Stephen Brown

No. Even though the government has all the information, what they don't have probably is the bank account. And it sounds like even if they did have the bank account, there are refunds, those exist.

A lot of people, unless you're really big, don't fight Customs and Border Protection. But I'm sure really big businesses, they probably have teams of people that know this stuff. They're probably the ones that are already pounding the portal.

21:40 Stephen Brown

For those of us who are the smaller sellers, or supporting smaller sellers, we're not dealing with this every minute of every day. This is just one of many things we're doing.

And so there is a process, and therefore it's not automatic. Even if they had all the information, it's not automatic. It's kind of like income taxes. You can get a refund, but you've got to do the process.

22:03 Stacy Walker

All right, that makes sense. Okay, one last question. How do I avoid surprises? Any advice you can give that would make it so that there are maybe fewer hiccups along the way?

22:15 Stephen Brown

I'm seeing increasingly great information out there. Flexport has like a living blog on this. If you just search for IEEPA tariff refunds, there's a lot of information.

We are putting information in our email newsletter every week. And as I see what I feel like is well vetted, authoritative information on this, putting it out there. And so I feel like the information is going to build up, hopefully AI holds it together and makes it even easier to consume. But I'm seeing some authoritative sources out there that are creating the information.

23:00 Stephen Brown

I'm sure there are going to be some hiccups. I'm sure there are going to be some challenges. That's why I'm not rushing into it right now. But I'm hoping within the next few weeks that we can get on the other end of the application so we can get our refund. For us, a small seller, it's going to be tens of thousands, which we will very much be happy to put back into our bank account, because we need it.

23:30 Stephen Brown

And I want this for all sellers who had to pay those tariffs, because they were painful and they probably really put people on the edge. And I think people may be exhausted from last year and tariffs this year and all the chaos that's going on. But I'm like, go get it. Please go get it. You need it, it'll help you. And we are going to do our best to try and communicate and support people where we can to help them get their refunds.

23:44 Stacy Walker

That's great, I love that. If people have questions, where's the best place for them to get in contact with you?

23:53 Stephen Brown

You can reach us through our website, ledgergurus.com. You could find me on LinkedIn as well, but I think ledgergurus.com, there's a contact us form, that's probably the best place.

And again, I was hesitant to do this episode, but I just want to get the information out there so people can start lining things up, figuring out where their customs entries are. You probably got an email, or you filed away somewhere. Start working on the ACE portal.

24:20 Stephen Brown

And we're going to be working on getting things going. But I want people to be aware, start working on this. And as we have more definitive information we'll communicate it out via the various channels that we use, whether that's our email newsletter or our YouTube channel.

24:39 Stacy Walker

Awesome. Thanks, Stephen.

24:40 Stephen Brown

Okay, so go get your refunds. Until the next episode.