U.S. Customs and Border Protection is requesting comments by January 30, 2012 on its Simplified Entry information collection (which is part of its information collection request for CBP Forms 3461 and 3461 ALT). CBP is proposing to extend the expiration date of this information collection with a change to the burden hours as a result of the proposed addition of the Simplified Entry Program.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has previously announced that all licensed Customs brokers must file their Triennial Status Report and $100 fee by February 29, 2012.
At the December 7, 2011 COAC meeting, the COAC Subcommittee on One U.S. Government at the Border (1USG@TB) provided an update on its efforts to identify redundancies with CBP and Participating Government Agency requests for documents/data. The Subcommittee has been focusing its efforts on the PGA member agencies of the Border Interagency Executive Committee1 and has begun a series of phone calls with each of the BIEC’s PGAs in order to discuss issues such as whether there is a need for reliance on paper forms, the viability of leveraging data currently provided to CBP for PGA purposes, how the recognition of an importer’s trusted shipper status by CBP could change the amount/type of data required by a PGA, etc.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced that the 2012 annual user fee of $138 for each customs broker permit and national permit held by an individual, partnership, association, or corporation is due by January 20, 2012.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has posted an updated version of its spreadsheet of ACE ESAR A2.2 (Initial Entry Types) programming issues.
The International Trade Commission has released a list of the statistical changes to the Harmonized Tariff Schedule approved by the Committee for Statistical Annotation of Tariff Schedules (484(f) Committee) to take effect on January 1, 2012. These changes are included in the ITC's preliminary version of the 2012 HTS, which has been updated to correct certain omissions.
Officials at the Softwood Lumber Board state that the new fee on softwood lumber imports of $0.35 per thousand board feet will not be electronically collected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection using the Automated Broker Interface on January 1, 2012, the date the fee begins. Instead, the fee, which only affects about 100 importers, will be submitted by importers directly to the Softwood Lumber Board, on a quarterly basis. The Board is planning to issue instructions on the fee's quarterly submission in January 2012.
The Court of International Trade has ruled, due to untimely claims, it cannot grant relief to two companies that sought refunds of EU beef hormone dispute duties assessed on merchandise entered after the duties were retroactively terminated. According to the CIT, the companies' complaints were filed more than two years after the action that triggered accrual of their claims -- which was the date CBP liquidated the entries and not the date of the CAFC's 2010 ruling that the retaliatory duties were terminated by operation of law in 2007.
The Federal Maritime Commission is seeking comments on ways to make the tariff filing exemption provided to licensed non-vessel-operating common carriers who have agreed to Negotiated Rate Arrangements (NRAs) with their shippers more useful, including its possible extension to foreign-based non-vessel-operating common carriers not licensed by the Federal Maritime Commission.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which began processing Generalized System of Preferences duty refunds in early December for entries made during the period of January 1, 2011 through November 4, 2011, expects that all refunds for entries that were filed via ABI with the Special Program Indicator (SPI) "A" will be issued by the end of February 2012.