How to Get IEEPA Tariff Refunds in 4 Steps!

So let's take a look and walk through the process.

0:54 Step one, get into the ACE portal

The first step to getting your IEEPA tariff refund is to get into the Customs and Border Patrol ACE secure data portal. This is the Automated Commercial Environment portal, and this was tricky for us. If you already have access to your ACE portal, skip ahead. We did not. We used an importer. We never had a reason to go to ACE.

This is a good starting place, this website. The link will be in the description. It has a lot of information. It also has references to documentation. So we went through this process. What is our subaccount, who is our account owner, and then which application should we use? For us, we're the importer of record, so we use the importer application. You'll see there's also a guide here that you may want to refer to as you're going through that.

1:42

This is going to take you to this form. There's going to be three key pieces of information. These pieces of information will come from your Customs and Border Patrol Form 5106 and import entries.

Let's talk about the company name. If we look at the 5106 under section 1, there are two sections that have names, 1A and 1D. If you have a DBA with your business, and that's how you filled it out with your 5106, it will leave you asking a question, "Which name do I use?" We debated. We ended up looking at an order entry and found that our business name or our importer name was a combination of 1A and 1D. So we actually used what was on the import entry, which was a combo of 1A and 1D. So an import entry will be very helpful.

2:31

The next piece of that form is the importer of record number. That is not going to be on 5106, but it will be on an order entry. Now, for us, we used our EIN as our identifier for our importer of record, and the importer of record number ended up being our EIN plus two additional digits. Again, that was on an order entry, so a recent order entry is going to become really critical.

Finally, the business email address. This is what you're going to want to use from your most recent 5106, and this is going to be on 2E. This is very important. You want to make sure you have access to this email, because this is where you're going to get a two-factor code to proceed with the ACE Portal application. If you don't have access to that email, you probably are going to need to do an updated 5106.

3:24 Two-factor codes and the 10 minute form

Once we got that information in, there'll be the opportunity to submit or click Next, and you're going to have to get a two-factor code. It took a few minutes to get that code, and it went to the email address that we put in this system.

Once you get past that point, you are going to get a form with a bunch of information and have, like, 10 minutes to fill it out, so be ready. So you're going to need to move very quickly in filling out this information. Be prepared because it'll only give you 10 minutes. We were able to do that. Here is a preview of some of that information. It's just a lot of your typical business information that you need to have handy.

Once you fill out that form, you're going to get an email that says you're good to go. And you're going to need to log in. It's going to take you to the login website.

Now, here's where it's interesting. When you go to log in, you are going to get a two-factor code, and we struggled because the code we got in the email was not working. So we found in some obscure forums that there was a link at the bottom of that two-factor email that if we clicked on that, it took us into the ACE portal. So looking at what the email's going to look like, we originally tried to put in this number, and it did not work. We tried it over and over, and it just put us in a loop. But when we clicked on the link below, success. It was quite painful, but once you get past that point, you're ready for the next step.

4:54 Step two, set up your bank information

Now, once you get into the ACE portal, step two is to set up your bank information. I'm going to go into the ACE portal, and I have recently viewed accounts. The first time you go in, you're going to want to go into Accounts, Importer, and it's going to list accounts, and you'll find your business there.

All right, so I'm in my ACE portal. The first thing I'm going to want to do is set up my bank information, and that's under Banking Details. It's pretty straightforward. I'm not going to show you my bank details, but if you go in there, you want to put in the bank account for which you want to receive refunds. That is step two.

5:33 Step three, find your eligible entries

Now, the next step you're going to take is determining which of your import entries are eligible for refunds. This is a really important step, and there's actually two parts to this step. The first I'm going to talk about that's applicable regardless of when you're watching this video, and that is to determine what your tariffed imports were.

Now, the refunds are only for the IEEPA tariffs, not for every tariff, and the IEEPA tariffs have a specific code. You're going to find those tariffs on your entry summary, which is the form 7501. These, if you haven't been collecting, you're going to want to collect them. It's a good thing to have in perpetuity. It helps with accounting.

Here is the newest 7501 that was updated in February 2026. This is a blank form. My entry summaries were using an older version of the 7501, which was slightly different. But essentially, you're going to want to look at the section that is the description of merchandise. It might be different numbered based on the version of the form. But under here, you're going to have some gobbly goop, including some HTS codes.

6:39

Let me give you a snapshot of what mine looks like. You're going to see here that there's this duty. The duties that are refundable start with 99. So these code 99 duties are the IEEPA duties, and those are the ones for which the tariffs are going to be refundable. Anything else will not be refundable, at least in the context of this video.

The other thing that you're going to want to find on that 7501 is the entry number. This is in box one. This is what you're going to file to get your refunds.

7:08

Depending on when you're watching this video, you may need to determine the liquidation status of your entries. To do this, if you go into the ACE Portal and click on the upper right Reports, this is going to launch a reporting tool. If you go in the upper right and click on the search bar and type in "liquidation," it's going to give you a bunch of reports related to the liquidation status of your imports.

There's two reports of importance, ES-701 and ES-010. Let's look at the liquidated reports. I'm going to click on this. You're going to want to select your trade account ACE ID. I'm going to select my account. Click Run, and that's going to give me a report that's going to have my entry summaries and some other information.

8:01

The entry summaries are going to be really important. So again, these are going to be similar to what you have in the 7501, but you're going to see the liquidation status. Depending on when you're filing your refunds, the liquidation status may be important, because refunds are being rolled out in phases. So phase one was around unliquidated entries and liquidated entries in the last 80 days. Liquidation can take some time, so there's a good chance that all of your imports since the IEEPA tariffs are eligible, but you're going to want to look at that.

The other report that you can look at is future liquidations, ES-010. I'm going to select current liquidation cycle indicator N. I'm going to select my trade account ACE ID. Click Run. That's going to give all of my entries that have not been liquidated. The key thing that I want to capture is my entry summary number. And again, you're going to want to match those numbers up with the 7501s that have that HTS code 99.

9:07 Step four, file through CAPE

Now the next step that you're going to want to do is to take that list of order entry numbers and file for a refund using the CAPE section. This was newly built specifically for the IEEPA tariff refunds.

You're going to upload a file. Now there's a couple of things you might want to refer to, which is user guide and error definitions and IEEPA duty refunds. If you click the upload button, there is going to be a template. Let's take a look at the template. It is just a CSV file where you're going to have a list of entry numbers. It's almost comical how simple this is, and yet the process is quite complicated.

So you're going to want to populate all the entry numbers for which you're going to request a refund, one per line. Once you've done that, you'll go in, upload that file, and then you should be done. You're going to want to check that the file upload status was accepted, and then if you go to the claim status, you will see information. You'll want to see that the claim status is accepted and the number of successes, which should match with the number of entries. Now you're done. You just have to wait to get the money.

10:27 Where to get help

All right. I shared with you the process that we went through to get our tariff refund. Obviously, everybody's situation may be unique. These were the steps that worked for us. From my research, lawyers and accountants cannot do this process for you. We can help you.

LedgerGurus is an ecommerce specialized accounting firm. If you need help with your ecommerce accounting or want some assistance with your IEEPA tariff refunds, reach out to us in the link below. And if you found this video helpful, like it, ask me a question in the comments, share it with others. Go get your refunds. See you on the next video.