How the merchandise processing fee and the other Form 7501 fees are calculated

Which fees can appear on a Form 7501?

Duty is not the only money on an entry summary. Every formal entry also carries the fees collected under 19 U.S.C. 58c and the Water Resources Development Act, and some commodities carry their own assessments. They are reported line by line in column 33 and totalled in the other fee summary for block 43, each with a collection code from the Form 7501 instructions.

The fiscal year amounts come from two CBP notices: 90 FR 34665 (CBP Dec. 25-10, published July 23, 2025, amounts required from October 1, 2025) and 91 FR 48398 (CBP Dec. 26-14, published July 31, 2026, amounts required from October 1, 2026). Section 24.23 itself still prints the base-year amounts ($25 and $485 for the MPF limits) and says they are adjusted each fiscal year by the inflation method in 24.22(k), so the regulation alone gives the wrong limits. Use the notice for the year.

How is the merchandise processing fee calculated?

The fee is 0.3464 percent of the value of the merchandise as determined under 19 U.S.C. 1401a, due from the importer of record when the entry summary is presented (19 CFR 24.23(b)(1)(i)(A)), though the limits that apply follow the entry date (below). That value is the entered value in the summary, so it already leaves out international freight and insurance that are separately identified. The instructions add that there is no de minimis for the MPF: you report the actual fee, or the minimum or maximum when the percentage falls outside them, and the limits apply to each formal entry, release or warehouse withdrawal for consumption.

The thresholds are the limits divided by 0.003464. The FY2027 notice repeats that only the limits change; the 0.3464 percent rate stays the same.

Which year's table applies follows the entry date, not the day the summary is filed. In CSMS # 69915041 (September 15, 2026), CBP said the FY2027 amounts apply to importations from October 1, 2026, including a summary pre-filed before that day when the entry date is on or after it. An entry dated September 28, 2026 keeps the FY2026 limits even if its summary goes in on October 8. Around each October 1, check the year against the entry date, not the summary date.

What do the fees come to on real entry lines?

Four illustrative entries, each recomputed from the rules above. What moves a fee is the entered value, the mode, the port and the trade-program claim on each line. The duty rate never does.

Entry 1: one line, ocean, product of India, entered value $40,000, entered October 9, 2026. MPF is $40,000 × 0.3464% = $138.56, inside the FY2027 limits. HMF is $40,000 × 0.125% = $50.00 because the goods were unloaded from a vessel at a listed port. Fees total $188.56. The line also carries $4,000 of Section 301 duty under heading 9903.05.44, which adds 10 percent to products of India entered from July 24, 2026 (U.S. note 52, HTS Chapter 99, Revision 22). That duty is in block 41; neither fee moves because of it.

Entry 2: one line, ocean, entered value $500,000, entered November 2, 2026. The percentage gives $1,732.00, above the FY2027 maximum, so the MPF is $670.86. HMF has no cap: $500,000 × 0.125% = $625.00. A filer that keyed the percentage without the cap overpays $1,061.14 on this entry. A filer still using the FY2026 maximum of $651.50 underpays $19.36, small on one entry and repeated on every capped entry of the year.

Entry 3: two lines, truck from Mexico, entered November 2, 2026. Line 1 is $150,000 of goods that originate under USMCA and carry the USMCA special program indicator. Line 2 is $60,000 of goods from the same supplier that do not meet the rule of origin. Under 19 CFR 24.23(c)(3) the fee applies only to the non-originating goods: $60,000 × 0.3464% = $207.84. No HMF, because nothing came off a vessel.

Look for the second row first: the SPI also controls the duty rate, so a missing SPI usually shows up as duty paid at the general rate, with the fee overpayment riding along. The duty side of that error is covered in unclaimed USMCA preference on past entries.

Entry 4: a $1,200 shipment of goods of Vietnam, entered October 20, 2026. 19 CFR 143.21(a) allows informal entry for shipments up to $2,500, "except for articles valued in excess of $250 classified in Chapter 99, Subchapters III and IV." The Section 301 duties in headings 9903.05.20 to 9903.05.84 sit in subchapter III, so from July 24, 2026 goods of the countries those headings cover, worth more than $250, need a formal entry unless an exemption in note 52 takes them out of those headings. Filed formally, the MPF is the FY2027 minimum of $34.58 (the percentage would be $4.16). Filed informally by mistake, it would have been $2.77. The fee gap is $31.81, but the bigger finding is the entry type itself, which was not allowed for those goods. CBP proposed changes to informal entry filing in 91 FR 64532 on October 8, 2026, with comments due December 7, 2026; until a final rule takes effect, 143.21 as written applies.

Which goods are exempt from the merchandise processing fee?

The exemptions are in 19 CFR 24.23(c), each by program, provision or agreement, with the entry date it starts from:

• Chapter 98 articles, except that for subheadings 9802.00.60 and 9802.00.80 the ad valorem fee applies to the dutiable portion only (24.23(c)(1)(i) and (c)(2)).
• Products of US insular possessions, Caribbean Basin beneficiary countries and least-developed beneficiary developing countries (24.23(c)(1)(ii) to (iv)).
• Mail, section 321 releases and general note 19 merchandise, other than Inbound EMS items formally entered on or after September 3, 2020 (24.23(c)(1)(v)).
• USMCA originating goods entered on or after July 1, 2020, and Canadian or Mexican goods under NAFTA before that date (24.23(c)(3)).
• Israel from September 16, 1998; Singapore and Chile from January 1, 2004; Australia from January 1, 2005; CAFTA-DR from March 1, 2006; Bahrain from August 1, 2006; Oman from January 1, 2009; Peru from February 1, 2009; Korea from March 15, 2012; Colombia from May 15, 2012; Panama from October 29, 2012 (24.23(c)(5) to (15)).

Two things follow. The exemption belongs to the originating goods, not to the country: a German or Chinese component shipped from Korea pays MPF unless the line qualifies under the agreement. And agreements that are not on the list, such as the Jordan and Morocco agreements, reduce duty without removing the MPF. The Form 7501 instructions tie the exemption to the special program indicator: "the importer must indicate the appropriate SPI for each HTS number in Column 31." No SPI, no exemption.

How is the harbor maintenance fee calculated, and when does it not apply?

Under 19 CFR 24.24(a), commercial cargo loaded on or unloaded from a commercial vessel at a port on the regulation's list pays 0.125 percent of its value. For imports, 24.24(e)(2)(i) fixes the basis: "the CBP appraised value of the shipment pursuant to 19 U.S.C. 1401a, the same basis as that used for duty payment," and says the fee is collected on all formal entries, "including warehouse entries and temporary importation under bond entries, and admissions into foreign trade zones." Foreign-trade zone admissions pay it quarterly on CBP Form 349 rather than on the entry.

What the HMF does not apply to:

• Air, truck and rail cargo. No vessel, no fee. Mode of transport in block 9 is the first check.
• Ports not on the list in 24.24(b), and some named harbors inside listed port areas that the list carves out.
• Cargo entering in bond for transportation and direct exportation to a foreign country (24.24(c)(6)), and the other exemptions in 24.24(c).
• A fee of $3 or less when it is the only payment due on the entry summary: the Form 7501 instructions say it is not collected.

There is no free trade agreement exemption from the HMF. A Korean or USMCA line that arrives by vessel pays it even when it pays neither duty nor MPF.

Where do audits find fee errors?

Fee errors are small per entry and systematic per filer: the same setting is wrong on every entry until someone changes it. These are the checks that find them, with the direction of each error.

The last row matters because both fees follow value. When a value correction lowers the entered value, the MPF and HMF fall in the same proportion, unless the MPF is at a limit. Correcting duty without the fees leaves money on the table in one direction or the other.

Are fees treated like duty when an entry is corrected?

Yes. 19 CFR 24.23(e) applies "all administrative and enforcement provisions under the customs laws and regulations, other than those laws and regulations relating to drawback" to the MPF as if it were a customs duty, and says a penalty assessable in relation to duty is assessed the same way for the fee. The HMF has its own rule to the same effect: 24.24(e)(4)(i) sends supplemental payments and refunds of HMF on imported cargo through the procedures for ordinary duties, and 24.24(e)(4)(ii) adds that a refund request must reach CBP within one year of the date the fee was paid. In practice that means:

1. Before liquidation, fee errors go on a post-summary correction, within 300 days of the entry date and no later than 15 days before the scheduled liquidation date, per CBP's post-summary correction page.
2. After liquidation, an overpaid fee is protested within 180 days; an underpaid fee is part of any prior disclosure. For an HMF overpayment, the one-year limit from payment in 24.24(e)(4)(ii) can close before the protest window does, so raise it early.
3. Interest runs on underpaid fees the same way it runs on duty, under 19 U.S.C. 1505.

The windows and routes for each case are in how long you have to fix a past entry.

How do I check the fees on my own entries?

1. Export the entry header and lines for the period: entry number, entry and summary dates, mode of transport, port of unlading, entry type, each line's HTS number, SPI and entered value, and the MPF and HMF amounts.
2. Assign each entry its fiscal year by entry date and recompute the MPF: 0.3464 percent of the entered value of the non-exempt lines, then apply that year's minimum and maximum.
3. Recompute the HMF for vessel entries at listed ports at 0.125 percent of entered value, with no cap, and check that no air, truck or rail entry carries it.
4. List lines whose SPI or chapter 98 number should change the MPF, and lines where a value correction left the fees untouched.
5. List low-value entries after July 24, 2026 that were filed informally with goods over $250 under a Chapter 99 subchapter III heading.
6. Total the differences by direction and hand them to your broker with the entry numbers. Overpayments and underpayments go on the same list.

Fees are one block of the entry summary; the post-entry audit guide covers the rest, and Form 7501 field by field says what each block should agree with. To check the duty on a line for its entry date, use the duty calculator. TariffSense reads entry summaries and broker exports and recomputes each entry's MPF and HMF for its fiscal year, mode and SPIs alongside the duty, flagging differences in both directions. Any correction is filed by your broker.