The CBSA Voluntary Disclosures Program: what to do after you find an error

What is the CBSA Voluntary Disclosures Program?

It is the CBSA's policy for relieving penalties and interest when you come forward with non-compliance before the CBSA finds it. The legal power is section 3.3 of the Customs Act, which lets the Minister or a designated officer waive or cancel all or part of any penalty or interest. Memorandum D11-6-4, revised on January 31, 2025 for CARM, sets out when the CBSA will use that power and how to apply. Voluntary disclosure is one of three grounds in the memorandum; the other two are extraordinary circumstances (fire, flood, serious illness of the person responsible) and errors or delays by the CBSA itself.

The memorandum covers the Customs Act, the Customs Tariff and the Special Import Measures Act, including interest on unpaid anti-dumping and countervailing duty. It defines a disclosure as coming forward to report previously unreported information or to correct inaccurate or incomplete information, which "may include voluntary self-correction under section 32.2".

Do you need a disclosure, or only a section 32.2 correction?

This is the first question after an audit, and the answer depends on the date you had reason to believe each declaration was wrong.

The key sentence is paragraph 10 of D11-6-4: the CBSA "may accept as voluntary disclosure, an adjustment to a CAD that is submitted under section 32.2 of the Act, when presented more than 90 days after having reason to believe and within the legislative time frame, when it is other than for a reassessment period in a trade verification." Inside 90 days there is no contravention to relieve, so there is nothing to disclose.

The reason-to-believe date is what gets lost. Under Memorandum D11-6-6, the final report of your own audit can be that date, and so can a supplier's letter, a ruling addressed to you or an earlier CBSA re-determination. An audit that turns up a supplier email from last year cancelling a certificate of origin has also turned up a reason-to-believe date that is already more than 90 days old.

What conditions must a valid disclosure meet?

Paragraph 14 of D11-6-4 lists them. All must be met.

1. Voluntary. You start it, and it is not prompted by CBSA action, another department or police. A disclosure is not voluntary once an officer has told you, in any manner, that the goods are being or were referred for examination. For trade verifications, the line is the notification letter: applying before it is issued is voluntary "even if they may be aware of CBSA's verification priorities".
2. A penalty is involved. It must involve a potential penalty, specified-rate interest, or action against the goods or a person. A correction inside 90 days involves none of these, which is the same point as above.
3. Complete. It must disclose all incidences of non-compliance for which you could be verified and reassessed, which D11-6-4 ties to the four-year window in D11-6-6 and Memorandum D11-6-10. For goods not reported or not accounted for, it is all incidences for the same or similar goods in the six years before the disclosure.
4. Special considerations. Prohibited goods and goods regulated by other departments have extra steps: report without delay, and the waiver may depend on meeting the other department's requirements.
5. Non-repetitive and explained (except for section 32.2 disclosures). Outside section 32.2, a disclosure can be denied if one was already granted for the same issue, and you must explain how the non-compliance happened and what you changed.

Completeness is where an audit-based disclosure usually fails. If the finding is a wrong tariff item on one part, the disclosure has to cover that part and its same and similar goods on every CAD in four years, not the lines the audit happened to sample. The CBSA's penalty guidelines for classification (contravention C352) treat a good as including same and similar goods with the same function that differ in size, colour or capacity without changing the tariff item.

What does an accepted disclosure give you, and what does it not?

Paragraph 11 of D11-6-4: for commercial goods, the CBSA waives penalties and, where interest would be at the specified rate, reduces it to the prescribed rate. The specified rate is defined in section 2 of the Customs Act as the prescribed rate plus 6% a year, and section 3.1 compounds both daily.

What stays:

• All duties and taxes. Paragraph 12: you still pay all duties and taxes owing, plus prescribed-rate interest. Customs duty, surtax, SIMA duty and GST on the corrected value all go in.
• Exposure to prosecution. Paragraph 21: the program "does not grant immunity from prosecution".
• Other departments' penalties. Paragraph 20: the CBSA cannot relieve them.
• Later checks. Appendix A says section 32.2 disclosures may be followed by a verification to confirm the fix held.

How does the self-adjustment waiver work, and when can it be withdrawn?

When you file a voluntary self-adjustment, paragraph 39 of D11-6-4 says any applicable penalties are "considered to be conditionally waived". The CBSA can withdraw the waiver and assess penalties if a later verification shows the adjustment was for a transaction in a reassessment period already identified in a verification report or monitoring, or that the disclosure conditions were not met.

This matters because a late correction without the disclosure request is exposed. The AMPS pages for C350 to C353 say second-level penalties "would also apply to all adjustments made by importers where they failed to correct declarations within 90 days of having reason to believe". File late corrections with the request, not alone. How the CBSA counts those penalties is in AMPS penalties: how the CBSA sizes them.

How do you apply in CARM?

For a section 32.2 correction filed late (Appendix A of D11-6-4):

1. Generate a case number in the CARM Client Portal, following the user guide for an EDI or API mass adjustment request.
2. Upload the request letter and supporting documents under that case number, naming them "Voluntary disclosure case request".
3. File the corrections as new versions of each CAD with the section 32.2 reason code, as Memorandum D17-2-1 describes. They post to your account and go through the normal statement of adjustment.
4. Wait for the regional office's decision. All communication runs through the portal.

For disclosures outside section 32.2 (Appendix B), Appendix D lists what the letter needs: client identifiers and the address where records are kept, the amount in Canadian dollars split into duties, SIMA duties, GST and other taxes, the period and a list or summary of every transaction, the nature and cause of the non-compliance and how it was found, how you will prevent it, copies of bills of lading and invoices, and a signed declaration that you are not aware of any verification or enforcement action underway. If some documents are not ready, the letter says what will follow and by what date. A customs broker or other service provider can present a no-name request using its own portal account and business number.

Pay what is owed with the filing. Paragraph 29 says that clients seeking relief from interest already assessed should pay it within the time on the statement, and the CBSA refunds it with prescribed-rate interest if the relief is granted. Waiting for the decision only adds interest.

Which clocks run around a disclosure?

D11-6-4 itself has no fixed window for completing a disclosure after you open it. The clocks around it come from the Act and the memorandum:

The 90-day no-name window is the useful one for planning. A broker can present the facts without your name, get a written view on whether the disclosure would succeed, and you then have 90 days to file the named disclosure on those facts.

What is the difference between disclosing and being caught?

An importer's internal audit report, issued eight months ago, found that one part was entered under a free tariff item on 50 CADs over two years when it belonged under an item at 6.5%. Nobody filed the corrections. The underpaid duty is CAD 40,000, outstanding for two years on average. For the illustration, assume a prescribed rate of 3% a year, so a specified rate of 9%; the actual rates are set quarterly and published by the CBSA.

Two things decide the gap. The penalty is per CAD because the reason to believe (the importer's own report) is more than 90 days old, and the interest gap grows with every month the duty is outstanding. A disclosure filed in the same week as the audit report would not have been needed at all: the 90 days would still have been open.

Being caught without any earlier reason to believe is different. If the CBSA's verification final report is the first specific information you had, D11-6-10 makes its date your reason-to-believe date, you correct within 90 days of it, and no AMPS penalty applies to that issue. Without earlier information, the reassessment covers the verification period named in the notification letter and going forward; with it, it reaches back to the date of that information, up to four years. That is why the audit that gave you specific information is the moment to act, not a reason to wait.

What about overpayments, SIMA and surtax found in the same audit?

A disclosure only deals with what you owe. Overpayments found in the same audit are refunds under section 74 and are filed separately, because subsection 32.2(5) bars a section 32.2 correction that produces a refund. Netting a refund against an underpayment inside one correction is not possible.

SIMA duties are not corrected by CAD adjustment at all. D17-2-1 says issues involving SIMA are submitted as a request for re-determination, and Memorandum D14-1-3 allows voluntary amendments that pay additional SIMA duty outside the usual 90-day limit, preferably within one year of release. D11-6-4 covers interest on unpaid anti-dumping and countervailing duty and penalties tied to SIMA information and records, so a SIMA underpayment can still be part of a complete disclosure. The SIMA route is covered in SIMA anti-dumping duties on past Canadian entries.

Surtax usually moves with the error that caused it. Where a surtax was missed because origin or the tariff item was declared wrongly, the section 32.2 clock applies to that declaration, and the surtax owed belongs in the same correction and the same complete disclosure.

How does this differ from a US prior disclosure?

The US route under 19 CFR 162.74 limits a negligent violation to interest on the actual loss and is sequenced around liquidation; prior disclosure after you find an underpayment covers it. The Canadian program is policy under a discretionary waiver power, its relief is a waiver of AMPS penalties and a lower interest rate, and its timing test is the verification notification letter. A cross-border importer with the same error in both countries should expect two filings with different contents and different clocks.

What should you do next on your own entries?

1. Date every finding. For each error in the audit, find the earliest specific information you had: supplier letters, rulings, CBSA determinations, earlier audit reports.
2. Sort them. Inside 90 days: correct under section 32.2. Past 90 days and not under verification: correct with a disclosure request. Overpayments: section 74.
3. Make each issue complete. Pull every CAD in four years with the same and similar goods, from the broker's line-level accounting export, not a sample.
4. File before any notification letter. Check the CBSA's current verification priorities against your tariff items, since a letter ends the voluntary condition for those goods.

TariffSense audits Canadian entries line by line from CAD/B3 data and broker accounting exports, finds the same issue across every CAD it appears on, and gives each finding its direction, reason and corrected value, so the disclosure covers the whole issue and the refunds are claimed separately. Your broker or your own filer submits the corrections and the request; confirm the route with a licensed customs broker or trade counsel. See the post-entry audit page, and the Canadian post-entry audit guide for what to check on each line.