CBP to modernize notice of liquidation

Notifying importers of their final duty calculations on entries would be handled online rather than by mail or checking paper documents at the Customs house under a proposed regulatory change from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.    In an effort to reduce paperwork waste, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) wants to discontinue the practice of physically providing official bulletin notices for liquidation of entries at local Customs houses and instead post the information on the CBP website.
   Liquidation is the final assessment of an importer’s calculation of duties and taxes owed for an entry of goods and whether the agency agrees with the figure or recalculates the duties owed. After final computation of duties, the entry is closed out. Importers typically have 180 days to file a protest challenging the entry liquidation.
   CBP would also post notices of liquidation extensions or suspensions online, at www.cbp.gov, according to the notice of proposed rulemaking published Friday.
   Once posted, the information will be available for a minimum of 15 months.
   Most importers who file entries electronically receive courtesy notices of liquidation through the Automated Broker Interface or other authorized electronic data interchange. For the small portion of importers who file entries by paper, CBP typically mails paper courtesy notices of liquidation. These informal paper notices help importers save the time of sending someone to the Customs house to view the official bulletin.
   The proposed rule on liquidations would not change the method in which CBP provides electronic courtesy notices of liquidation, reliquidation, extension or suspension, but it would discontinue the practice of mailing any paper notices. CBP would also discontinue mailing all paper courtesy notices of liquidation.
   CBP estimates that the liquidation changes could affect about 29,000 importers per year, but the number could be lower if the same importer took more than one trip to a Customs station to view an official notice or relied on more than one paper notice. The agency estimated that importers took an average of 2,500 trips to its offices and that it mailed an average of 26,100 paper courtesy notices of liquidation, extension and suspension each year.