In the Federal Register of March 16, 2010, U.S. Customs and Border Protection ("CBP") published a notice of proposed rulemaking by which the agency proposes a regulatory amendment to eliminate the mailing of courtesy notices of liquidation to importers of record. This change would make most importers dependent upon their customs brokers to inform them of the liquidation, a change from the current situation. Public comments regarding the proposal may be submitted through May 17, 2010.
The official notice of liquidation of an entry of imported merchandise continues to be the bulletin notice physically lodged in the customhouse at each port, and the date of liquidation is typically the date that bulletin is posted. The date of liquidation initiates the 180-day period during which an importer may protest the rate or amount of duty assessed against an entry of merchandise, contest the classification or value of the goods on which such assessment is based, or seek correction of any other error, mistake, or inadvertence resulting in assessment of excessive duty; it also opens the 90-day period within which CBP may reliquidate for any reason; and liquidation ends the importer's opportunity to seek, without protest, the refund of excess duty deposited due to clerical error.
Currently, liquidation information and the status of an importer's entries are available through query of the Automated Broker Interface ("ABI") system, which may only be performed by the ABI filer (generally, the customs broker); the ABI filer also electronically receives a courtesy notice of liquidation—but the importer's only direct and automatic notification is via the hard-copy courtesy notice (Form 4333-A) that is mailed to the importer of record. Any importer (by special request and for a fee) may obtain from CBP "extract" reports listing the importer's liquidated and unliquidated entries. As a practical matter, however, importers have come to rely primarily upon receipt of the courtesy notice of liquidation as notification of the all important event that triggers the importer's right to protest.
CBP estimates that 99.6 percent of entries are "paperless" transactions filed electronically through ABI and, under the proposal, any importer that is not itself an ABI filer would be limited to reliance upon advice from its customs broker as to the date of liquidation, at least with respect to "no change" liquidations. Importers may request such information, but this is not a service routinely performed by customs brokers under current procedures. Given that the expected liquidation cycle exceeds 10 months from date of entry, an importer's relationship with a given customs broker may change in many respects before that broker receives the electronic courtesy notice of liquidation "on behalf of the importer" and, even if the broker continues as the importer's agent, the additional service of diligently monitoring liquidation of entries to safeguard the importer's interests may be expected to come at additional cost and may be performed with uncertain reliability. Nevertheless, under CBP's proposal to eliminate the mailing of hard-copy courtesy notices of liquidation directly to importers of record, the importer will have little alternative than to rely upon its customs broker to effectively enable the importer's exercise of protest rights.
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