1. Start Here: CBP Charges No Fees, and Has Warned About Scams
The single most important fact to anchor on: U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not charge importers a fee to file a CAPE declaration or process a 2025 IEEPA tariff refund. CBP has published its own scam warnings about outside parties charging upfront fees for "help" with this process. That fact should be the first filter you run any offer through.
This doesn't mean every paid service is illegitimate — plenty of importers reasonably want help with entry-level documentation, underwriting, and filing across multiple phases of a complex process. But how a service is paid, and when, tells you almost everything about whether it's operating in good faith. If you haven't yet confirmed the underlying facts of this refund process, our hub on eligibility for the importer-of-record threshold is the place to start before evaluating any specific offer.
CBP's refund mechanism and program details: cbp.gov — IEEPA Duty Refunds.
2. Legitimate Recovery Service vs. Upfront-Fee Scam
The line between a legitimate contingency-based recovery service and the scam pattern CBP warns about comes down to one question: are you being asked to pay before any money has actually been recovered?
A legitimate contingency-based service is paid only when a claim successfully recovers money — commonly a transparent percentage, such as a 20% contingency fee, taken from the proceeds after a successful claim. You pay nothing if nothing is recovered, which aligns the service's incentives with yours.
The upfront-fee scam pattern CBP has warned about works differently: payment is requested before any recovery has occurred, often framed as a "processing fee" or "filing fee." Since CBP itself charges nothing to file a CAPE declaration, any fee requested before a recovery is a cost with no corresponding CBP requirement behind it.
3. A Practical Verification Checklist
Before responding to any offer — inbound call, email, or ad — run it through these questions:
Does it ask for money before any recovery has happened?
Treat that as a serious red flag. Contingency-based services are paid on success; there's rarely a legitimate reason to pay upfront for a claim that hasn't recovered anything yet.
Does it explain an actual underwriting process?
Legitimate recovery and advance-funding services typically involve real underwriting — identity verification such as Persona-style KYC checks, review of financial documentation like CPA-prepared workbooks, formal agreements, and review of the underlying CBP entry evidence. A service that skips straight to "sign here and pay us" is worth questioning.
Does it correctly describe the CAPE/CBP mechanism — and the IEEPA-only limitation?
A legitimate offer should reference CAPE (Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries) declarations filed inside CBP's ACE system, and be specific that only IEEPA tariffs are refundable under the Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump ruling — not Section 232, 301, 201, or antidumping/countervailing duty (AD/CVD) tariffs. An offer that talks about "getting back all your 2025 tariffs" either doesn't understand the process or is being deliberately vague. See which 2025 tariffs actually qualify for the line-item breakdown.
Does it make guaranteed-dollar promises?
A guaranteed dollar figure, promised before your claim has even been reviewed, is one of the more reliable signs something is off — more on this below.
Not sure if an offer you've received checks out?
A quick records check tells you whether your business may be eligible in the first place — independent of any specific offer you've been sent.
Check my eligibility → Free · No obligation · Educational, not legal advice4. Red Flags: Guaranteed Dollar Amounts and Vague Explanations
No legitimate party can guarantee a specific refund amount before your claim has been reviewed. Recovery depends on the specifics of your entries — whether the tariff lines are IEEPA-based, whether your entries fall within the applicable filing window, and which CAPE phase they sit in. There's also a live legal wrinkle: the Department of Justice filed a Federal Circuit appeal in June 2026 contesting entitlement for some finally-liquidated ("Phase 3") entries. Refunds are actively flowing for the bulk of claims in Phases 1 and 2, but nothing here is universal or automatic — which is exactly why "guaranteed" language should raise your guard.
Legitimate players in this space talk in ranges, not guarantees — for example, describing 93–95 cents on the dollar as achievable for strong, clean claims, while being explicit that the actual outcome depends on your specific claim. A flat guaranteed number, offered before anyone has reviewed your entries, is not that.
| Signal | Legitimate Pattern | Scam Pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Payment timing | Paid only on successful recovery | Payment requested upfront, before recovery |
| Fee structure | Transparent contingency, e.g. 20% | Vague or undisclosed "processing" fees |
| Underwriting | Describes identity verification, CPA documentation review, signed agreements | Skips underwriting, rushes to sign/pay |
| Scope of tariffs | Specific: IEEPA tariffs only | Vague: "all your 2025 tariffs" |
| Dollar outcome | Ranges, e.g. 93–95% for strong claims, claim-dependent | Guaranteed fixed dollar amount |
5. What Legitimacy Actually Looks Like
Beyond the checklist above, scale and track record are worth weighing as legitimacy signals — not a guarantee of outcome, but evidence a service has operated at a level fly-by-night operations typically haven't. A provider with a Fortune 500 client on record, or with term sheets in the hundreds of millions (for example, arrangements referenced at $780M and $250M), has necessarily gone through institutional underwriting a scam operation charging small upfront fees has no reason to replicate.
None of that substitutes for your own verification. But it's a useful cross-check: ask what underwriting and client base a service can point to, and treat vague answers the same way you'd treat a guaranteed dollar figure.
6. Why This Isn't Like ERC
If you went through the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) wave, you may have reason to be extra cautious — ERC became notorious for aggressive, sometimes fraudulent promoters exploiting a program with a lot of subjective judgment calls baked into eligibility. The mechanics here differ in one important way: a 2025 IEEPA tariff refund is what's sometimes called a "black-and-white refund." The underlying facts — was your business the importer of record, was the tariff line item IEEPA-based, did the entry fall within the filing window — are documented facts sitting in CBP's own entry data, not a judgment call. That doesn't eliminate the need for verification, but it does mean eligibility here is something a broker can check against records, not argue into existence.
7. Next Steps
Verifying an offer is separate from confirming your own eligibility — worth doing both. Work through whether your business may be eligible, understand which of your tariffs actually qualify, and if you're deciding whether to self-file, see self-file or hire help and why CAPE claims stall. If you're weighing a claim buyout against waiting on CBP, advance vs. loan explains why a contingency-based advance isn't debt.
The bottom line: CBP charges nothing, legitimate services are paid on success, and any offer that reverses either should be treated with skepticism.