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CBP Amends its October 1, 2004 Policy on the Reporting of the Ultimate Consignee At Time of Entry/Release

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has recently posted to its Web site an amended version of an earlier memorandum which, effective October 1, 2004, revised CBP's policy pertaining to the identification of the ultimate consignee at time of entry or release.

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(At the time of the initial October 1, 2004 memo, CBP had stated that for many years CBP had allowed different parties to be identified as the ultimate consignee for shipments of imported merchandise, but that CBP now needed more accurate and advanced ultimate consignee data, in light of September 11, 2001. See ITT's Online Archives or 09/22/04 news, 04092205, for BP summary of October 1, 2004 memorandum. See ITT's Online Archives or 10/05/04 and 11/01/04 news, 04100505 and 04110110, for BP summaries on CBP's discretionary enforcement period through October 31, 2004.)

Amended Version Effective January 1, 2005, Reflects Revision of One Paragraph

The amended version of the memorandum is effective January 1, 2005, and reflects the revision of one paragraph regarding Automated Commercial System (ACS) limitations.

Transmission of "Certified from Summary" Consolidated Entries Now Disallowed

CBP states that the revised paragraph now indicates that the transmission of "certified from summary" consolidated entries is disallowed.

The revised paragraph reads as follows:

"Due to ACS system limitations that allow for the submission of a single ultimate consignee, release of consolidated entries will not be granted from entry summary information. Filers must file entry using CBP 3461 (or CBP 3461 ALT) information in ABI (Automated Broker Interface) before submission of the entry summary. ACS data edits will be developed to enforce this requirement at a date to be announced."

(Prior to this change, the paragraph had stated that "Due to ACS limitations, when consolidated entries are certified from summary data at the time of entry or release, the portion of the consolidated entry with the highest value must be included in the ABI transmission, while the ultimate consignees associated with the remaining portions of the consolidated entry must be identified on a separate list that must be attached to the entry package.")

CBP amended policy (dated 01/05/05) available at http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/import/cargo_summary/ult_consignee.xml.