CBP Amends Regulations to Reflect Increase in De Minimis Value for Duty Exemption

Excerpt from: Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg | August 29, 2016

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued an interim final rule amending its regulations to reflect the increase from $200 to $800 in the value of certain articles that may be imported by one person on one day free of duty and tax. This increase was enacted as part of the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act and was effective as of March 10.

Interested persons are invited to submit written data, views, or arguments on all aspects of this rule. In particular, CBP is seeking comments on how it can maintain the collection of data required by partner government agencies to prevent unlawful importations when shipments of goods valued below $800 that qualify for the duty and tax exemption are admitted through “release from manifest,” given that the manifest information may not contain all the necessary information required by PGAs for admissibility purposes.

This rule also makes the following clarifying and conforming amendments to CBP’s regulations.

• Provides that no alcoholic beverage, cigars (including cheroots and cigarillos) and cigarettes containing tobacco, cigarette tubes, cigarette papers, smoking tobacco (including water pipe tobacco, pipe tobacco, and roll-your-own tobacco), snuff, or chewing tobacco is eligible for the exemption
• Removes perfume from the list of products excluded from the exemption because the excise tax on such products was eliminated in 1995
• Clarifies that importers of goods qualifying for this exemption are not exempt from having to pay any applicable excise taxes collected by other agencies on imported goods
• Clarifies that different dollar amounts apply to articles that are bona fide gifts and articles and are shipped from the Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa