CBP to Begin Retroactive Billing for MPF Increase

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that it will begin billing for the merchandise processing fee increased that was retroactively effective on Oct. 1, 2011. CBP did not begin accepting the new MPF rate until Nov. 5 but could not begin the retroactive billing process for merchandise entered between Oct. 1 and Nov. 4 until the refund processing was completed for the Generalized System of Preferences, Andean Trade Preference Act and Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act retroactive renewals.

CBP states that it will script liquidate entries with a future liquidation date to generate a bill for the additional MPF due. Differences of less than $20 are de minimis and as such will not be processed for retroactive MPF. Entries flagged for reconciliation will have the MPF increase accounted for via the reconciliation entry.

The scripting process was to have begun the week of June 11 and CBP is expecting to liquidate approximately 20,000 entries per week.

Once the scripting begins, The Entry, Summary, and Drawback Branch (ESD) will post weekly results on CBPnet Secure. Entries for which CBP system successfully generated a bill will be listed in the file titled, “MPF Increases”. This list is being provided to the ports for use as back-up documentation in relation to the B12 report (Bulletin Notice of Entries Liquidated – by Batch and Sequence). Entries that failed the scripting process will be available via the same link, in the file titled, “MPF Script Errors”. Ports must manually liquidate all entries that are included in this list.