On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize a president to impose tariffs. The 6–3 decision affirmed what the Court of International Trade and, on appeal, the en banc Federal Circuit had already found in 2025.
That ruling didn't just stop future IEEPA tariffs. It created an obligation to unwind the ones already collected.
The 53 Million Entry Question
CBP must liquidate or reliquidate millions of entries without IEEPA duties. Is your refund claim ready?
53M+
Entries carrying IEEPA duties
Across the life of the tariffs
$166B
IEEPA duties paid or deposited
Estimated total, per court filings
330K
Importers affected
Estimated, per CBP and court filings
Figures per CBP and court filings following the Supreme Court's February 20, 2026 ruling striking down IEEPA tariffs.
#IEEPA #CAPE #DutyRefund #CBP
The Order Behind the Number
On March 4, 2026, the Court of International Trade — Judge Richard K. Eaton — ordered CBP to liquidate or reliquidate every "not final" entry without regard to IEEPA duties. That single order is what turned a Supreme Court ruling into a live operational problem for CBP: tens of millions of individual entries, each one needing to be identified, corrected, and refunded.
Not every affected entry gets fixed automatically. CBP built a specific mechanism for it — CAPE, the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries functionality inside the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) — and getting a refund generally means filing through it.
CBP rolled CAPE out in phases rather than all at once. Phase 1 launched April 20, 2026, covering unliquidated entries and entries liquidated within the 80 days before filing. Phase 2 launched June 29, 2026, adding entries flagged for reconciliation where the reconciliation entry itself hasn't yet been filed — the same 80-day liquidation window still applies. Entries that are finally liquidated beyond the statutory reliquidation window aren't eligible through CAPE regardless of phase.
How a Claim Actually Moves
From CAPE Declaration to Refund
Four checkpoints, roughly 70–100 days end to end — not a single-step filing.
Day 0
File the CAPE Declaration
A CSV file listing only entry numbers — up to 9,999 per declaration — submitted through the CAPE tab in ACE.
~Day 10
CBP Validates the Filing
Entry-level checks confirm each entry actually carries a dutiable IEEPA Chapter 99 code and falls inside the eligible window.
~45 Days After Acceptance
Entry Liquidates or Reliquidates
IEEPA duties are removed from the entry under the Court of International Trade's reliquidation order.
Day 60–90
Refund and Interest Issued
Paid to the ACH refund banking account on file — not automatically the same account used to pay duties.
#CAPE #IEEPA #DutyRefund
The part that surprises people: the CAPE Declaration itself asks for almost nothing. It's a CSV file with one column — entry number — up to 9,999 entries per filing. No valuation data, no liquidation dates, no duty amounts get typed into the form. CBP already has all of that on record and looks it up once the entry number comes in.
That doesn't mean liquidation dates and duty amounts don't matter — it means the work happens before you file, not in the filing. You still need to know an entry actually carries a refundable IEEPA duty and falls inside the eligible window, because CBP's validation will reject it either way — you just don't type that data into the declaration yourself.
What You'll Need Before You File
Before You File a CAPE Declaration
One of these is the actual submission. The rest is verification you do first.
Entry numbers for every affected entry
The only data field CBP actually requires on the declaration itself — a single-column CSV, one entry number per row.
Confirmation each entry carries an IEEPA Chapter 99 code
Section 232 and Section 301 duties aren't refundable through CAPE — entries without a qualifying IEEPA code get rejected at validation.
Liquidation status and date for each entry
Verified internally before filing, even though it isn't submitted with the declaration — entries finally liquidated outside the eligible window can't be processed.
ACH refund banking set up in ACE
A separate authorization from your duty-payment account, set up in the Importer sub-account — the single most common cause of a held refund.
Current, authorized ACE credentials
Filed under the importer of record's own account or an authorized broker's — outdated or mismatched logins are a routine rejection cause.
#CAPE #IEEPA #EntryFiling
The distinction that matters here: exactly one of these items is what actually goes into the CAPE Declaration. Everything else is the verification work that has to happen first, or the filing gets rejected at validation instead of moving forward.
Where Claims Actually Get Stuck
What Actually Delays a CAPE Refund
The patterns behind most held or rejected declarations.
Skipping ACH Refund Setup
The account that paid your duties isn't the account CBP refunds to — that's a separate ACH authorization.
Filing Outside the Window
Entries finally liquidated beyond the statutory reliquidation window can't be processed through CAPE, no matter how many times they're resubmitted.
Mixing in Non-IEEPA Duties
Section 232 or 301 layers on the same entry aren't refundable here — claiming them causes a rejection.
CSV Formatting Errors
A wrong column header, extra columns, or a malformed entry number — CBP validates the file structure strictly.
IOR/Filer Mismatch
Filed under an account that doesn't match the importer of record on the entry — often from outdated or inactive ACE logins.
Resubmitting Ineligible Entries
Entries barred by the reliquidation window stay barred regardless of how many times they're refiled.
#CAPE #IEEPA #DutyRefund
- Refund banking is not payment banking — set up ACH refund authorization separately, before you file, not after a refund is already held
- The 80-day liquidation window and the broader statutory reliquidation bar are hard cutoffs, not guidelines — refiling an ineligible entry doesn't change its eligibility
- CAPE refunds Chapter 99 IEEPA duties specifically — Section 232 and 301 layers on the same entry are a different claim, filed a different way
- A rejected declaration usually means a fixable data problem (credentials, formatting, mismatch) — but a barred entry stays barred
How Declaro Reads This
The hard part of a CAPE claim was never the CSV itself — it's knowing, entry by entry, which ones actually carry a refundable IEEPA Chapter 99 duty and which ones don't, before CBP's validation tells you the hard way. That's the same discipline behind Declaro's classification work generally: verify the specific fact pattern before you file, instead of finding out at rejection.
With 53 million entries in play, "probably eligible" isn't a filing strategy.
Declaro is AI-powered HTS classification and duty recovery for licensed customs broker firms. Built on 220,000+ CBP CROSS rulings. Learn more →