CAPE Has Launched: This is What We Are Seeing and Hearing
CBP launched CAPE and began accepting submissions from importers on Monday, April 20th. There have been sporadic reports of excessive lag or account holders having trouble logging in. Hardly surprising given the level of interest and the rush to file among importers, and overall the system seems to be holding up well under the load.
Give CBP credit as well for designing as simple a filing as could reasonably be expected and a processing logic that helps ensure declarations are correct. The downside to their approach is it pushes a lot of work back on the importer. The acceptance engine is very particular. If you have duplicate entries, entries that aren’t eligible for CAPE, if your column heading is wrong, or if the file is not in their preferred format, the entire declaration will be automatically rejected. Figuring out why requires downloading and interpreting a spreadsheet.
CAPE also will NOT tell you if you are missing entries that are eligible, an important omission that will undoubtedly cost some importers a portion of their rightful refund.
This past Friday, April 24th, was the first automated liquidation that included CAPE. We had filed declarations for several clients earlier in the week, and saw them all re-liquidated in this first cycle. This is another sign that the system is working.
More importantly, it provides an additional layer of protection against the government backing away from its apparent commitment to providing refunds. Declining to do so would now require them to re-liquidate these same entries again. Statutory liquidation deadlines now work in our clients’ favor rather than the government’s. Every day brings these re-liquidated entries closer to the 90-day deadline after which the government can no longer unilaterally re-liquidate.
Our last observation related to CAPE is that the ACE account application process and CBP tech support seem to be struggling far more than the portal itself. This is a significant problem for claiming refunds, because most importers need ACE access to get their entry data and file their declaration, and all will need it to enter their bank details and receive their refund. And, of course, while they wait for CBP to open their account, entries continue to age and potentially become ineligible for CAPE.
