U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced that in support of trade modernization and the Executive Order calling for establishment of the Single Window by December 31, 2016, CBP is preparing to roll out new Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) capabilities that support the liquidation process. On October 1, 2016, CBP will deploy liquidation capabilities in ACE, at which time liquidations will no longer be processed in the Automated Commercial System (ACS) and must be done via ACE. An Interim Final Rule (IFR) will be published prior to October 1st announcing liquidation capabilities in ACE.
The following are the high level changes for processing liquidations in ACE.
New Weekly Processing: Liquidations will no longer occur on a two week cycle. Starting October 1st, liquidations will process weekly, with entry summaries liquidating every Friday. Once an entry summary is liquidated, ACE will automatically populate a liquidation date equal to the next immediate Friday – for liquidations processed before 12pm EST, liquidations will post Friday of the same week; liquidations occurring after this timeframe will post the following Friday.
Electronic Bulletin, No More Paper Postings: CBP will no longer print the C16 notices for posting to the liquidation bulletin. This process will be replaced with an entirely electronic bulletin available on CBP.gov that will update every 90 minutes. The electronic bulletin provides public notice and an ACE account will not be required to access. Liquidations will be posted 365 days a year, including holidays. The trade will be able to search the electronic bulletin by filer or date the event occurred. Postings will be kept online for 18 months to allow time to search for a liquidation. After 18 months, a request will need to be made to CBP to view a past liquidation. For entry summaries with liquidation dates in the future, the liquidation reports will no longer display as “liquidated” and will instead display “pending” as the liquidation status.
Extensions and Suspensions: CBP will no longer print notifications of extension and suspension. The electronic bulletin will serve as the official notice for extensions and suspensions. Extensions and suspensions will post same day to the bulletin, within 90 minutes of the extension and suspension action. Sureties and filers will continue to receive extension and suspension courtesy notices, which will be sent via ABI. Those filing in paper will not receive a courtesy notice, they will only be available to those filing electronically. If necessary, a liquidation may be extended up to three years. Reports will be available for CBP and the trade to view extension and suspension records.
Temporary Importations Under Bond (TIB) Extensions: TIB Extensions requested by Trade will automatically be accepted in ACE, but CBP will have the ability to deny an extension as necessary. TIBs may only be extended for up to two years.
Deem Liquidations: For entry summaries that are deem liquidated, they will display on the electronic bulletin as “deem liquidated” for the basis of liquidation. If no action has been taken to extend or suspend, an entry summary will deem liquidate at 365 days.
For ACE liquidation programming updates, please reference the following CATAIR documents:
