Customs and Border Protection (CBP) debuted its highly anticipated tariff refund tool on Monday to a deluge of declarations from importers seeking payback on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) tariffs they paid before the duties were invalidated by the Supreme Court in February.
The Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries (CAPE) platform launched within CBP’s import and export processing system, the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE). According to new guidance released by the agency on Friday, users can submit CAPE declarations with multiple entry numbers for IEEPA refunds, and they will receive a single, consolidated refund amount once those requests are processed.
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CBP indicated earlier this month that the CAPE process would be deployed in phases. Phase 1 is limited to certain unliquidated entries as well as certain entries that are no more than 80 days past liquidation, amounting to about three-fifths of the 53 million import entries subject to IEEPA duties. To begin the process, a CAPE declaration is uploaded to the ACE portal where it is assessed for its accuracy. It is then submitted to a batch run to validate refund data, and successful declarations are mass processed. CBP said most importers will receive their refunds within 60 to 90 days of approval.
“As of April 14, 2026, CBP has completed the primary development of all components and functionalities for CAPE Phase 1,” CBP executive director of trade programs Brandon Lord wrote in an update to the Court of International Trade (CIT)—which mandated that the agency begin the refund process in early March. “The agency has transitioned to an intensive testing posture, focused on performance and scenario-based testing of all CAPE components and the remediation of any defects identified during testing,” Lord wrote.
As of last week, Lord estimated that all elements of the CAPE portal were 85 percent to 95 percent complete, including the claim portal, mass processing, review and liquidation or reliquidation and the refund component.
According to CBP’s March filing with the CIT, about 330,000 importers shelled out about $166 billion in tariff payments. As of April 9, Lord said about 56,497 importers of record had either completed the process to received electronic refunds for all their IEEPA entries or a designee, like a customs brokers, had done so on their behalf.
Refunds can be issued through the portal for about 82 percent of entries with IEEPA duty payments or deposits, amounting to about $127 billion.
