Your Tariff Refund Is Waiting, but Not for Long

The Supreme Court struck down billions in illegal tariffs. Whether your business sees a refund depends on where your goods entered, how your supply chain is structured, and whether you act before the window closes.

On February 20, 2026, the United States Supreme Court handed down a ruling that should be on the radar of every business owner in this region, particularly those who import goods. In Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, the Court held 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not authorize the President to impose tariffs, though the majority was divided on the reasoning. That means that every tariff collected under IEEPA from the “fentanyl tariffs” imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China beginning in February 2025, through the sweeping reciprocal tariffs imposed globally starting April 2025, was unlawful from the day they were collected, and businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs may be entitled to a refund. The question is how, when, and whether the standard rules even apply to your situation.

On March 4, 2026, the Court of International Trade directed Customs and Border Protection to liquidate all affected entries without IEEPA duties, effectively ordering universal refunds. Two days later, a senior CBP official filed a declaration with the court stating that the agency was “not able to comply” with the order, its existing systems and procedures were not built for a refund process of this volume. According to that declaration, CBP identified 53 million entries, $166 billion in collected tariffs across 330,000 importers nationwide, with roughly 20 million entries still unliquidated. Judge Eaton responded by pausing the refund order pending further proceedings. As of mid-March, CBP reported the new web-based system was between 40 and 80 percent complete and remains under active court supervision, with updates required on a weekly basis. That deadline may slip. The Harbor Maintenance Tax refund, a far smaller program, took four years from the Supreme Court's 1998 ruling striking down that tax on exports for CBP to publish a functional claims procedure.

Those who remember the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) know exactly how this story goes. First comes the announcement. Then comes the backlog. Then come the audits of those who filed incorrectly or without proper documentation. And then, sometimes years later, come the denials for businesses that waited too long or missed a procedural step.

There is a hard legal deadline already ticking on some of your entries, and it has nothing to do with when CBP finishes building its refund portal. Under federal customs law, an entry is deemed “liquidated” generally within one year of the goods entering the country, though CBP runs an automatic liquidation cycle at 314 days. Once liquidated, an importer has only 180 days to file a protest and preserve their right to a refund. After that window closes, the entry is final. The Court of International Trade's refund order covers only unliquidated entries and recently liquidated entries for which liquidation is not yet final. Entries where the 180-day protest window has already closed without a timely filing fall outside the order’s scope, and recovery on those entries, if available at all, would require separate litigation.

That means goods that entered the United States and were liquidated in mid-to-late 2025 may already be inside, or approaching the 180-day window. Every day without action is a day closer to a potentially permanent forfeiture of money that the Supreme Court has already said should not have been taken in the first place.

Not All Territories Are in the Same Position, and That Matters Enormously

This is where the situation becomes particularly nuanced for businesses in Guam, the CNMI, and American Samoa, and where the standard mainland analysis does not simply transfer.

Guam sits outside the customs territory of the United States, as defined in federal law. While U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are present at Guam's ports and process incoming shipments, the legal question of whether IEEPA tariffs, which were imposed on imports into the customs territory, applied to goods imported directly into Guam for consumption here is not a simple one. Many island businesses route shipments through mainland consolidation ports such as Long Beach or Seattle before transshipment to Guam. Those goods entered the customs territory at the mainland port and would have been assessed IEEPA duties at that point. A business that imports directly from Japan or Korea into Guam may be in a fundamentally different legal position than one whose shipments moved through California first. The analysis depends entirely on the specific entry and shipping record.

The CNMI occupies an even more distinct legal space. Under the Covenant, the CNMI is expressly excluded from the customs territory of the United States, and the Commonwealth government is granted the authority to levy its own duties on goods imported into its territory. In practice, goods imported directly into the CNMI from foreign countries go through the CNMI's own Division of Customs, administered under the Department of Finance, and are assessed CNMI excise taxes rather than federal tariffs. A business in Saipan that imported goods directly from Asia through Tanapag Harbor likely did not pay IEEPA tariffs and would be unlikely to have a direct federal refund claim. However, a business that sourced goods through a mainland U.S. distributor who embedded tariff costs in their prices, or that routed shipments through Honolulu or Los Angeles, may well have a claim, and tracing that liability requires examining the supply chain, not just the invoice.

American Samoa stands in a similar position of customs autonomy. Like the CNMI, American Samoa administers its own customs system entirely separately from federal CBP and uses its own tariff schedule. Businesses in Pago Pago that imported goods directly almost certainly did not pay IEEPA tariffs through federal channels. But again, the downstream and indirect exposures require careful examination.

The common thread across all three territories is this: the answer to “are we eligible?” is not obvious, and the wrong assumption in either direction costs money. Assuming you are not eligible when you are, means forfeiting a refund you are owed. Assuming you are eligible when you are not, means spending time and resources chasing a claim that was never there.

For businesses operating in the fifty states, the analysis is more straightforward but no less urgent. Mainland importers who paid IEEPA tariffs directly to CBP at the port of entry are squarely within the refund framework, but straightforward does not mean automatic. The same liquidation deadlines, protest windows, and documentation requirements apply, and the same backlog risk exists. A business in any state that imported goods from China, Canada, Mexico, or any of the countries subject to the reciprocal tariffs during the relevant period should be evaluating its entry records now, not after CBP announces the portal is open.

Puerto Rico is within the U.S. customs territory and is treated similarly to a state for these purposes, meaning businesses there that paid IEEPA tariffs directly to CBP are subject to the same refund framework as their mainland counterparts. The same deadlines and documentation requirements apply.

The U.S. Virgin Islands, like Guam and the CNMI, sit outside the customs territory of the United States. That means the same questions about how goods entered and through which channels apply there as well. Direct imports may carry a different analysis than goods routed through a mainland port first, and that distinction is worth examining before assuming eligibility or writing off a potential claim.

What Needs to Happen, and Why It Is Not a DIY Project for You or Your Bookkeeper

When the refund process opens, importers will be required to file declarations through CBP's ACE portal, specifying every entry on which IEEPA duties were paid, with CBP then validating each entry and recalculating the refund. All refunds will be issued electronically, which means every business that wants to receive a refund must already be registered for an ACH refund in the ACE system, a step CBP has confirmed many importers have not yet completed. Separate from the administrative process, there is an active litigation pathway through the Court of International Trade for businesses with entries approaching or past the protest deadline.

Navigating these two parallel tracks, the administrative refund process and potential litigation to preserve rights on liquidated entries, requires someone who can navigate the federal customs laws, knows how CBP systems work, and understands how the territorial nuances described above affect the analysis. This is a specialized federal practice, similar to practice before the Internal Revenue Service. The stakes are also different: unlike a tax return that can be amended, a missed customs protest deadline is generally permanent.

The businesses that come out of this well will be the ones that had qualified representation evaluating their supply chains and entry records before the portal opened, not after the backlog formed. That lesson was written in the ERC experience, and it is being written again now.

The territorial nuances described in this column are not theoretical. They are the difference between a valid refund claim and a wasted filing, and they are exactly the kind of questions that a firm with no presence in the Pacific is unlikely to get right. Knowing that the CNMI runs its own customs authority, that Guam sits outside the U.S. customs territory, and that supply chains through Pacific transshipment points create different exposure profiles than direct imports from Asia, this is not knowledge you acquire from a textbook. It comes from being here.

Azarvand Tax Law operates nationwide, with offices and staff in Maryland and Washington, D.C., and the CNMI. That combination matters. The local presence means the firm understands these islands not as an abstraction on a map, but as the actual business environment in which its clients operate every day. That is a meaningful advantage over any firm that has never set foot in the Marianas and is learning the territorial distinctions on your dime.

If your business paid tariffs on imported goods, directly or through a supply chain, between February 2025 and February 2026, contact us today for a complimentary consultation to find out whether you may be entitled to a Tariff Refund.

With a presence spanning from the mainland to the Marianas, Azarvand Tax Law can always be reached on weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 6:30 p.m, local time, regardless of what part of the United States you reside in. Reach us by email at info@azarvandtaxlaw.com, by phone at 410-698-4005, or book a time directly online at azarvandtaxlaw.com. Do not wait for the window to close before finding out where you stand.