One of the neat things about practicing Customs law is the sense of tradition it provides. After all, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the successor to agencies that have been in operation since 1789. Many of the procedures followed today, such as liquidations and protests, were established well over a century ago, as were many principles of tariff classification that we still use.
Bulletin Notice, A Blast from the Past
I’ll admit, though, that some of the old procedures seem anomalous in this day and age. Take bulletin notice of liquidation. To effect liquidation of an entry, CBP is required to post notice of liquidation at the customshouse where the entry took place. In the really old days, importers or their agents would pore over the printed listing of liquidated entries to determine the status of theirs. This was a particularly onerous requirement, especially before the statutory requirement for liquidation within one year of entry was implemented.
The Customs Service, CBP’s predecessor, reduced the burden by mailing “courtesy notices” of liquidation, now replaced with electronic ones. Importers and brokers also can monitor an entry’s status in the Automated Commercial Environment database.
Nevertheless, the official notice of liquidation has continued to be the paper “bulletin notice”, just as in the nineteenth century. Importers that overlooked a posted notice were sadly out of luck if they later tried to file an untimely protest; the principle was set out in Samuel Aaron, Inc. v. United States (regarding notice of a reliquidation), among many other court decisions.
Forward Into the Twenty-First Century
It looks like bulletin notice, in its current form, is finally going the way of buggy whips and the Federalist Party. CBP has adopted a final rule establishing electronic notice as the formal means for liquidation. The rule was announced on December 12, 2016 and will be effective on January 14, 2017.
Under the rule, CBP has amended its regulations so that “official notice of liquidation, suspension of liquidation, and extension of liquidation will be posted electronically on the CBP Web site.” Customshouse posting, and mailed notices of suspension and extension, will cease. In their place, CBP will establish an ‘‘Official Notices of Liquidation’’ link, with liquidation information searchable by “data elements” such as filer code (but not importer of record number). One benefit is that the website database is national in scope, unlike the port-specific approach for paper bulletin postings.
Notices of automatic (no change) liquidation are to be posted every Friday, while liquidations following CBP action will be placed on the website within 90 minutes after processing. CBP will include notices of entries liquidated by operation of law once it has identified them. Posted notices shall be maintained on the website for at least a fifteen-month period, and the site will provide an option for retrieving older actions that are no longer available. CBP also intends to issue electronic courtesy notices to the entry filer or its agent and the surety on an entry.
In practice, no importers of my acquaintance actually trundle down to their local Customs office to check the printed liquidation reports. Instead, they, or more often, their broker, get the information from ACE. Thus, the new process probably won’t result in any significant practical changes in the way importers do business. And, while it’s always a bit saddening to see another relic of the past disappear, I’m not sure anyone will truly miss paper notices of liquidation.
