How to recover overpaid import duty: PSC, protest, 1520(d) or drawback, by what the audit found

What decides which recovery route you use?

Three facts about each entry decide the route, and an audit has to record all three for every finding:

1. What the audit found. A wrong rate, classification, value or quantity is one kind of finding. A trade-agreement preference that was never claimed is another. Duties imposed under a measure that was later struck down are a third. Duties on goods that were later exported are a fourth. Each has its own legal route.
2. Where the entry is in its life. Unliquidated, liquidated within the last 180 days or liquidated longer ago. Liquidation is the event that closes one route and opens another. CBP normally schedules it about 314 days after entry, according to its post-summary correction guidance, and posts the notice on cbp.gov under 19 CFR 159.9.
3. When the goods were imported. Two routes, the 1520(d) claim and drawback, run from the date of importation rather than from liquidation.

The same finding on three entries can therefore need three different routes. That is why recovery is planned per entry, not per finding. The full set of clocks, with a worked timeline, is on how long you have to fix a past entry.

Filing any of these is done by the importer of record or its licensed customs broker. Confirm the route with your broker or trade counsel before filing; this page describes the rules and their sources, not advice on a specific entry.

Which route fits which audit finding?

The rest of this page walks through each route and what it needs.

How does a post-summary correction recover overpaid duty?

A post-summary correction (PSC) replaces the entry summary in ACE before liquidation. CBP calls it the sole method for the trade to correct an ACE entry summary electronically before liquidation. A PSC can change both revenue data (rates, values, quantities, Chapter 99 lines) and non-revenue data, with up to five reason codes and a description of the change.

The conditions in CBP's guidance:

• The entry summary must be accepted, paid, in CBP control and not under CBP review.
• It must not be liquidated.
• It must be filed within 300 days of the date of entry and at least 15 days before the scheduled liquidation date, whichever is earlier. If the importer asked for and was granted a liquidation extension, only the 15-day rule applies. Entries whose liquidation is suspended beyond 300 days for AD/CVD, EAPA or a court injunction can also be corrected outside the 300 days.
• Some data cannot be changed: the importer of record, the port of entry, the date of entry, the 1520(d) indicator for trade-agreement claims and a few statement fields.

Because a PSC is a full replacement of the entry summary, the refund arrives when the corrected entry liquidates. CBP's guidance says that if an accelerated liquidation is requested on the PSC, it will strive to process it within 60 calendar days.

Two rules changed in 2026. The Federal Register notice of July 6, 2026 (91 FR 41053) made ACH payment mandatory from August 5, 2026 for PSCs that increase the duty owed, allowed importers to pay that increase before liquidation or wait to be billed at liquidation, and put into the test the practice of accepting PSCs outside 300 days for entries suspended beyond that point. And CBP's CAPE notice prohibits using a PSC to request an IEEPA refund; IEEPA duties go through CAPE.

A PSC is the cheapest route, and it is only open for roughly the first ten months of an entry's life. An audit that runs monthly keeps most findings inside it.

How does a protest recover overpaid duty?

Once an entry liquidates, the decisions in it become final unless they are protested. 19 U.S.C. 1514(a) lists what can be protested: the appraised value, the classification and rate and amount of duty, charges and exactions, exclusion of merchandise, the liquidation or reliquidation itself, refusal to pay drawback and refusal to reliquidate under 1520(d). It also covers a clerical error, mistake of fact or other inadvertence adverse to the importer.

How it works:

1. File within 180 days after liquidation (19 U.S.C. 1514(c)(3); 19 CFR 174.12(e) for entries made on or after December 18, 2004). The liquidation date is the date the notice is posted on cbp.gov, not the date you heard about it.
2. File one protest per entry, or one per category of merchandise on the entry. One protest may cover several entries when the protesting party, the category of merchandise and the decision protested are the same (19 CFR 174.13(b)). It must set out each decision protested, the merchandise affected and the reasons.
3. File in ACE or on paper. CBP's protest page says protests can be filed electronically in the ACE protest module or on CBP Form 19 at the port of entry. The importer, consignee, their surety or an authorized agent such as the broker may file (19 CFR 174.12(a)).
4. Amend before the deadline if needed. A protest can be amended to add new decisions until the 180 days run out; new arguments for objections already raised can be added until CBP decides.
5. Wait, or ask for speed. CBP has two years to act (19 CFR 174.21). A request for accelerated disposition by registered or certified mail gives CBP 30 days, after which the protest is deemed denied (19 CFR 174.22).
6. If denied, sue within 180 days. A civil action in the Court of International Trade must be started within 180 days of the denial notice or of a denial by operation of law (28 U.S.C. 2636(a)).

A protest is the route for most findings on liquidated entries: a misclassification, a Chapter 99 layer that should not have applied, freight left in the value. It is also how you dispute a decision CBP made at liquidation, including an IEEPA refund decision under CAPE.

How does a 1520(d) claim recover duty on unclaimed trade-agreement goods?

When goods qualified under a free trade agreement's rules of origin but were entered at the general rate, 19 U.S.C. 1520(d) lets CBP reliquidate and refund the excess duty, including any merchandise processing fee, even though no protest was filed. The statute lists the agreements it covers, including USMCA, CAFTA-DR, Chile, Oman, Peru, Korea, Colombia and Panama.

The claim must be filed within one year after the date of importation, and for USMCA goods 19 CFR 182.32 requires:

• a declaration that the good was originating at the time of importation, with the entry numbers and dates;
• a copy of the certification of origin;
• a statement of whether the entry summary was shared with anyone else, and with whom;
• a statement of whether any protest, petition or reliquidation request was filed on the entries.

The one-year clock is the trap. It runs from importation, so a claim for goods imported eleven months ago is due next month even though the entry has not yet liquidated. A refusal to reliquidate under 1520(d) can itself be protested within 180 days of the denial notice.

CBP's IEEPA FAQ notes that a 1520(d) claim for USMCA goods may include IEEPA duties paid under the Canada and Mexico orders, and that such claims are filed through the ACE protest module, on paper or through FTA reconciliation. Under 19 U.S.C. 1505(c), interest on a 1520(d) refund runs from the date the claim is made, not from the deposit.

How are IEEPA duties refunded?

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court held that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs (Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287, decided with Trump v. V.O.S. Selections, Inc.). Executive Order 14389 ended the duties, and CBP stopped collecting them on goods entered from February 24, 2026 (CSMS # 67834313). CBP refunds the duties already paid through CAPE, a function in the ACE Portal, rather than entry by entry.

What CBP's CAPE notice (updated July 10, 2026) and its IEEPA refund page say:

• The importer of record or the broker that filed the entries uploads a CSV file of entry numbers, up to 9,999 per declaration. ABI cannot be used.
• CAPE currently accepts most entries that are unliquidated or up to 80 days past their liquidation date, entries flagged for reconciliation where the type 09 entry is not yet filed, and warehouse withdrawal entries. Entries that are suspended or extended keep that status and are refunded at liquidation.
• It does not currently accept entries with an open protest, entries on a drawback claim, entries whose liquidation is final or AD/CVD entries for which Commerce has issued liquidation instructions that are still pending liquidation.
• Refunds include interest and are generally issued 60 to 90 days after the declaration is accepted, by ACH to the importer of record or a designated party.
• Once an entry is on a CAPE Declaration it cannot be removed and a PSC can no longer be filed on it. A protest on other issues has to wait until the entry has liquidated and the refund has issued. File any unrelated PSC first.

For finally liquidated entries, CBP's position is that it needs a court order to reliquidate. The Court of International Trade records that CBP deployed CAPE Phase 3 on October 6, 2026, letting the plaintiffs in the more than 4,000 cases where a reliquidation order has been entered file CAPE declarations, and on October 8, 2026 it certified a class of importers of record who paid IEEPA duties between February 1, 2025 and February 19, 2026 and did not sue separately (Freestyle World, Inc. v. CBP, Slip Op. 26-123). [OWNER REVIEW: has the court ordered class-wide relief, or has CBP opened CAPE to class members, since October 27, 2026? If not, keep this sentence as written.] The entry-level question, which of your entries qualify and how much, is answered on IEEPA refunds: which entries qualify.

Section 122 duties, paid on goods entered from February 24, 2026 until the surcharge lapsed on July 24, 2026 under Proclamation 11012, are a separate question. On May 7, 2026 the Court of International Trade held the surcharge unlawful and enjoined it for three plaintiffs only, dismissing the other states' claims for lack of standing (Oregon v. United States, Slip Op. 26-47). [OWNER REVIEW: has the government appealed Oregon v. United States, and is there any refund route for Section 122 duty paid by importers who were not plaintiffs? Neither was found in a primary source on October 27, 2026; if still unknown, keep this sentence as written.] On CBP's normal cycle of about 314 days, most of those entries had not yet liquidated at the date of this page, so the 180-day protest clock had not started for them.

When is reconciliation the route?

Reconciliation is for issues the importer knew about at entry. The entry summary is flagged, for value, certain classification issues, 9802 value or 1520(d) trade-agreement claims, and the final figures are filed later on a reconciliation entry, type 09. CBP's reconciliation guidance gives 21 months from the oldest flagged entry summary for value, classification and 9802 issues, and 12 months from the oldest importation for FTA claims, with no extensions. One reconciliation produces one bill or one refund across all the flagged entries.

If your audit finds a value issue that recurs, such as a year-end transfer price adjustment, reconciliation on future entries is often cleaner than correcting each entry. It does not reach entries that were not flagged.

When is drawback the route?

Drawback is not a correction. It refunds duties, taxes and fees on imported goods that are later exported or destroyed under CBP supervision, either unused or after being used in manufacturing, including where substitute goods are exported. Under 19 U.S.C. 1313, the refund is generally 99 percent of the duties, taxes and fees paid, and the claim must be filed within five years of the date of importation.

An audit feeds drawback in two ways: it lists the import lines and the duty paid per unit, which is what the claim is built on, and it shows which duties are eligible. Some measures exclude drawback. Executive Order 14193, which imposed IEEPA duties on products of Canada, stated that no drawback would be available for those duties. CBP's CAPE guidance asks importers to submit IEEPA entries to CAPE before filing a drawback claim on them.

What about underpayments found in the same audit?

An audit that only reports overpayments is half an audit. Underpayments are corrected, not left.

• Unliquidated entries: a PSC pays the difference, by ACH from August 5, 2026, with interest billed at liquidation.
• Liquidated entries or a pattern across many entries: a prior disclosure under 19 CFR 162.74 tells CBP the class of merchandise, the entries or ports and dates, what was wrong and the correct information, before CBP opens a formal investigation. Under 19 U.S.C. 1592(c)(4), if the violation resulted from negligence or gross negligence and the unpaid duties are tendered, the penalty is limited to interest on those duties.

Filing a refund claim on one line while sitting on an underpayment in the same entries invites the review you were trying to avoid. File both together. If CBP has already asked about the entries, see CF-28 and CF-29: how to audit yourself before CBP asks.

How does one finding play out on four entries?

An audit finds that international freight was left inside the entered value on one product, and one unclaimed trade-agreement preference on another. On each entry, $4,000 of freight was declared as value on a line whose duties total 28 percent ad valorem, so each entry overpaid $1,120 (illustrative figures). The audit runs on October 27:

1. Entry A, entered 120 days ago, unliquidated. Inside the 300-day window and far from liquidation. Route: PSC. Refund of $1,120 at liquidation, with interest from the deposit date.
2. Entry B, entered about 375 days ago, liquidated 60 days ago. Route: protest, due 120 days from now.
3. Entry C, liquidated 250 days ago. Past the 180-day protest window and past CBP's 90-day voluntary reliquidation period. No route. The $1,120 is lost.
4. Entry D, a different product from the same audit, imported 11 months ago from Mexico, qualified under USMCA but entered without the claim. Route: 1520(d) claim, due within a month, refunding the duty and the MPF.

Entry C is the cost of auditing once a year. The same freight finding, caught at month two, would have been a PSC on entries A, B and C.

How do you plan recovery across a whole export?

1. List every finding with its entry number, line, dollar effect and direction (over or under).
2. Add each entry's dates: entry date, importation date, liquidation status and liquidation date from ACE.
3. Assign a route to each line using the table above, and the deadline that goes with it.
4. Sort by deadline, not by amount. A 1520(d) claim due next month comes before a large PSC with eight months left.
5. Bundle by route: one PSC per entry, one protest per entry or category (several entries can go on one protest), one CAPE Declaration for IEEPA entries, one 1520(d) claim per set of entries.
6. Pair underpayments with the overpayments in the same entries and decide with your broker or counsel whether a prior disclosure is needed.
7. Fix the cause in the product master or the broker's template, so the next entry is right.

TariffSense does steps 1 to 3 from the documents you already have: it reads entry summaries and broker entry exports, checks every line against the rules for its entry date, and reports each finding with the declared value, the rule and the corrected value, in both directions. Filing the PSC, protest or claim stays with your broker. The post-entry audit page shows what comes back. To check one line's rate yourself, use the duty calculator; for what to look at on each line, see the post-entry audit pillar.

What should you do next on your own entries?

Take your last audit finding, or the most recent entry you suspect was wrong, and find every other entry with the same product. Add the entry date, the importation date and the liquidation date for each from ACE or your broker. Mark which ones are still inside the PSC window, which are inside the 180-day protest window and which have a 1520(d) clock running. Anything due in the next 60 days goes to your broker this week.