The $166 billion tariff refund pool is real. The question that matters for any individual importer is narrower: are my entries in it? A refund that exists in the aggregate is not the same as a refund you can collect. This post is a plain-English checklist of the factors that determine whether a given import entry is still eligible for an IEEPA-related refund — and which factors put an entry at risk of being outside the window.
If you are looking at a row of entries in a spreadsheet and wondering which ones are worth pursuing, work through this checklist one entry at a time.
Factor 1: Did the entry actually pay an IEEPA tariff?
This is the first filter and the most important one. The February 2026 Supreme Court ruling invalidated IEEPA as a source of tariff authority. It did not invalidate every duty your business paid. An entry is only eligible for refund under the IEEPA ruling if some portion of the duties paid on it was assessed under IEEPA authority — specifically, the reciprocal tariff layer or the China/Hong Kong add-on layer.
Duties paid under Section 301 (China lists 1 through 4), Section 232 (steel and aluminium), or Section 201 (safeguard duties on solar, washing machines, and others) are not covered by the ruling. See IEEPA vs Section 301 and 232 for the full breakdown.
Your entry summary (Customs Form 7501) itemises duties by statute and HTSUS line. If you cannot tell whether a given entry paid IEEPA-layer duty, ask your customs broker for the entry summary — the breakdown is on the form.
Factor 2: What is the liquidation date?
Liquidation is the administrative event that closes the duty calculation on an entry. It is not the entry date, and it is not the date the goods arrived. It is a specific event CBP records in its system, typically occurring somewhere between ten and twelve months after the entry date for ordinary formal entries.
Finding the liquidation date for every affected entry is the single most important piece of preparation. Once you have it, the 180-day protest deadline is just arithmetic:
Protest deadline = Liquidation date + 180 days
The 180-day deadline is set by 19 U.S.C. § 1514(c)(3) and is jurisdictional — meaning CBP has no authority to accept a late protest, no matter the reason. See our deadline deep-dive for the mechanics.
Factor 3: How many days until the deadline?
Once you have the deadline, sort your entries by it ascending. The entries at the top of that list are the urgent ones. A rough triage framework:
- More than 60 days to deadline — comfortable. File when you are ready, but do not stall indefinitely. Volume can back up at the ports if many importers file late in the window.
- 30 to 60 days — act soon. Mail times, port processing queues, and weekends all compress the effective window. Budget a working week of lead time.
- Less than 30 days — urgent. File immediately. At this stage, the risk of missing the deadline for reasons unrelated to the merits of the protest is meaningful.
- Past the deadline — no protest possible. The only remaining question is whether the entry is reachable through the new CAPE refund channel, which is discussed below.
Factor 4: Is the entry a “self-liquidating” type?
Not every entry follows the default liquidation schedule. A few types close on a much faster clock:
- Type 11 informal entries — self-liquidating, closing on a fast schedule that may already have run
- Certain entries with special processing status — including some mail entries and low-value entries
If your import volume includes Type 11 entries from 2025, assume the clock on those moved faster than you remember. Check the liquidation dates first. Those are the entries most likely to have slipped outside the protest window without you noticing.
Factor 5: Is there a classification or valuation issue on the entry?
CBP can offset an approved refund against amounts the importer owes on other grounds. In the IEEPA refund context, that means an entry with a clean record will produce a cleaner recovery. An entry with a pending classification dispute, a known valuation error, or an unresolved reconciliation matter may produce a smaller net refund — or none at all, if the offsets exceed the IEEPA duty component.
This is not a reason to avoid filing a protest. It is a reason to know what you are walking into, and — if the offsets are material — to involve a customs broker or trade attorney on the side of the ledger that sits outside the IEEPA question.
Factor 6: Is the entry subject to AD/CVD or other special categories?
Antidumping and countervailing duty entries, drawback-linked entries, and entries with suspended or extended liquidation are on different administrative tracks. They are not necessarily excluded from IEEPA refunds, but they are likely to be handled in a later phase of CBP’s refund processing (through CAPE or otherwise) and may have their own procedural wrinkles.
If the bulk of your exposure is in AD/CVD entries, the 180-day protest path is still worth pursuing for the IEEPA component of duty, but expect the refund timeline on those entries to be longer and involve additional process.
Factor 7: Past the 180-day mark? Check CAPE
For entries where the protest deadline has already passed, the question is whether the new CAPE refund channel — the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries portal CBP is building — can reach them. The honest answer is that as of April 2026, CBP has not fully defined which past-deadline entries are still inside CAPE’s universe and which are not. The relevant statutes are 19 U.S.C. § 1501 (voluntary reliquidation, 90 days) and 19 U.S.C. § 1514 (the 180-day protest window), and how CAPE treats finality in relation to either is not yet settled.
The conservative read is: if an entry is past its 180-day deadline, the protest channel is closed, but CAPE may still be an option once the portal is accepting claims. We cover the CAPE mechanics in detail in the CAPE refund portal explainer.
A short triage routine
Put together, the checklist becomes a short routine you can run against your entry list:
- Pull the entry list for the IEEPA tariff period (2025 through early 2026) from your broker
- For each entry, confirm whether it paid any IEEPA-layer duty (reciprocal or China/HK add-on)
- Record the liquidation date and compute the 180-day deadline
- Flag self-liquidating entry types separately — those may have moved faster than the default
- Sort by deadline ascending and triage the top of the list
- For entries past the deadline, mark them for the CAPE channel when it is ready to receive claims
A protest-generation service like Tariff Spot turns the list into filed protests at a flat fee per entry. The checklist above is the work an importer should do first, before sending entries to any tool. Knowing which entries are worth pursuing is half the battle.
Finished the triage and ready to file on the urgent entries? Start a refund claim and work through the entries one at a time.