Am I Eligible? The Importer-of-Record Threshold — for Every Buyer Type

1. What Actually Happened: The Ruling in Plain English

On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court decided Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (No. 24-1287) in a 6–3 ruling: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. That's a narrow but consequential legal finding — it applies specifically to tariffs imposed under IEEPA, not to every tariff a business paid in 2025.

In response, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stood up a refund mechanism called CAPE — Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries — inside its existing ACE (Automated Commercial Environment) system. CAPE Phase 1 opened around April 20, 2026. Instead of importers filing thousands of individual protests, CAPE lets an importer file a single electronic CAPE Declaration (a CSV file) that can cover multiple entries at once.

The scale here is real: roughly $166 billion in refund claims is queued across an estimated 330,000 importers of record. But scale doesn't equal automatic entitlement for any one business — that depends entirely on the specifics covered below.

2. The One Question That Decides Everything: Are You the Importer of Record?

Before you calculate anything, answer this: were you the importer of record (IOR) on the entries in question? This is the single most repeated blocker we see across every audience — importers, DDP buyers, manufacturers, and freight forwarders all stall here before they get to anything else.

The importer of record is whoever is legally named as such on the CBP entry summary (Form 7501 or its electronic equivalent) — not necessarily whoever paid for the goods, arranged the shipment, or bore the economic cost of the tariff. CBP's refund process is generally only available to the entity with standing on the entry itself.

This creates a gap that trips people up constantly: a business can pay tariff costs indirectly — folded into a landed-cost invoice from a supplier, absorbed into a freight bill, or passed through a courier — without ever appearing as the importer of record on the underlying CBP entry. If that's your situation, direct CBP recovery generally isn't available to you the same way it is to the named importer of record, though you may still have options. We cover that scenario in depth in our companion spoke: not the importer of record? how you can still recover.

How to check who's on your entries

• Pull your entry summaries. Your customs broker or freight forwarder can usually produce Form 7501 (or ACE-portal equivalent) for your 2025 entries within a day or two.
• Look at the "Importer of Record" field specifically — not the "consignee," "buyer," or "ultimate consignee" field. These are often different parties, and only the IOR designation matters for standing.
• If you bought DDP (Delivered Duty Paid), your supplier or the courier that cleared the shipment was very likely listed as the importer of record — even though you paid the landed cost, including the tariff, indirectly.

3. Which Tariffs Actually Qualify — IEEPA vs. Section 232/301

This is the second most common point of confusion, and it matters just as much as the importer-of-record question. The Supreme Court ruling and the CAPE refund mechanism apply only to tariffs imposed under IEEPA. They do not apply to tariffs imposed under other legal authorities — even if those tariffs were also imposed in 2025 and even if they show up on the same entry summary.

Many businesses see "tariff refund" and assume every dollar of trade-related duty they paid in 2025 is in play. It isn't. A single shipment can carry both an IEEPA tariff line and a Section 301 line — only the IEEPA portion is potentially refundable here. Sorting this out at the HTS-line level, not the entry level, is the difference between a claim that holds up and one that gets rejected. We go deeper on exactly how to tell them apart in which 2025 tariffs actually qualify: IEEPA vs. Section 232/301.

4. Eligibility by Buyer Type

Here's how the importer-of-record threshold plays out for each type of business we hear from most:

Importers of record

If your business is named as the importer of record on entries carrying IEEPA tariff line items, you're in the most direct position to file a CAPE claim. This is the clearest eligibility case — but "clearest" doesn't mean "automatic." You still need to confirm the tariff type (IEEPA, not 232/301) and that you're within the applicable filing window.

DDP / landed-cost buyers

If you bought goods DDP and never appeared on the CBP entry, you're very likely not the importer of record — even though the tariff cost was baked into what you paid. Direct CBP claims generally aren't available to you in this position. See not the importer of record? how you can still recover for what options remain.

Manufacturers who imported directly

Manufacturers that imported components, materials, or finished goods themselves — rather than through a distributor — are frequently the importer of record on those entries, and may be eligible on the same basis as any other direct importer. The catch is usually recordkeeping: manufacturers with high entry volume and multiple SKUs need to isolate the IEEPA-tariff line items specifically, not just total duty spend.

Customs brokers filing on behalf of clients

Brokers aren't the importer of record themselves in most arrangements, but they're often best positioned to identify which of their clients' entries carry IEEPA tariff line items, since they hold the entry-level data. A broker auditing a client's ACE portal for CAPE eligibility is one of the more efficient ways this gets discovered.

Freight forwarders, 3PLs, and warehouses

If tariff costs were passed through your business as part of a logistics arrangement, whether you have a direct claim again comes down to whether you — or your client — was the importer of record on the underlying entry. This is worth checking entry-by-entry rather than assuming a blanket answer for your book of business.

5. Not the Importer of Record? You May Still Have a Path

A large share of businesses that economically paid 2025 IEEPA tariffs — particularly smaller importers and DDP buyers who moved goods through couriers like FedEx, UPS, or DHL — will find they weren't the named importer of record on their entries. That doesn't necessarily mean there's nothing to be done, but it does mean the direct CAPE path generally isn't open to you the way it is to the named importer of record.

In that scenario, recovery typically runs through a different channel — working with or through the actual importer of record, or pursuing advocacy and legal escalation rather than filing your own CAPE declaration. This is a meaningfully different (and more involved) process than a direct claim, and it deserves its own explanation: read not the importer of record? how you can still recover — paid via FedEx, UPS, or DHL.

6. What You'll Need on Hand Once You Confirm Eligibility

Confirming you may be eligible is the first gate. The second is having the documentation to support a claim — CAPE declarations and any downstream protest or litigation are only as strong as the entry-level records behind them. Regardless of which buyer type you fall into, this is generally what you or your broker will need to pull together:

• Entry summaries (CBP Form 7501 or the ACE-portal equivalent) for the affected import period, at the entry level — not summarized accounts-payable totals.
• Line-item tariff detail that isolates IEEPA-specific duty amounts from Section 232, 301, 201, and AD/CVD line items on the same entries. This is the single most common place claims go wrong, because it requires looking below the entry level to the individual tariff line.
• Importer of record documentation confirming which entity was legally named on each entry — this is what determines standing, as covered above.
• HTS (Harmonized Tariff Schedule) codes used on the affected entries, since both classification and tariff-type eligibility can hinge on them.
• Liquidation dates for each entry, since those dates determine which deadline track applies (see the deadlines table below).

If a customs broker or freight forwarder handled your 2025 import transactions, they typically hold most of this documentation even if you don't have it readily on hand internally — looping them in early is usually the fastest way to assemble a complete picture before you file.

7. The Deadlines That Apply to You

Eligibility isn't just about who you are — it's also about timing. CBP refund and protest processes operate on statutory windows, and which window applies to you depends on when your entries liquidated.

The 180-day protest deadline under 19 U.S.C. §1514 runs from the date of liquidation — not from the date of the Supreme Court ruling and not from when CAPE opened. That means some entries may already be approaching or past the protest window even though the refund mechanism itself is new. This is exactly the kind of detail that causes claims to stall — see why CAPE tariff refund claims stall or get rejected for the full list of failure points, and how long does CBP actually take for what happens after you file.

8. The Honest Caveat: What's Still Being Litigated

It's worth being direct about this rather than glossing over it: refunds are actively flowing for the bulk of claims in Phases 1 and 2, but eligibility is not universally settled for every entry category. On June 2, 2026, the Department of Justice filed an appeal to the Federal Circuit contesting whether importers who did not personally sue in the underlying litigation are entitled to refunds — a dispute concentrated in what's being called "Phase 3," covering entries that were finally liquidated before the ruling.

Source: Holland & Knight — IEEPA Tariff Refund Update: Government Appeals (June 2026).

9. Next Steps — and the Rest of This Series

The importer-of-record threshold is the gate every other question sits behind. Once you've confirmed whether you have standing, and whether the tariffs in question are IEEPA (not Section 232/301), the rest of the process — filing, timing, and whether to wait for CBP or take an advance — becomes much more concrete. This hub is the starting point for a full series covering each of those questions: