U.S. Customs plans to change the filing deadline for advance import data required under the “10+2” rule to make compliance easier for shippers, according to a program official.
About 45 % of Importer Security Filings are being submitted on time, but CBP believes that figure is low because it has been measuring timeliness against the time the first bill of lading is filed by the carrier under the 24-hour advance manifest rule. Many bills of lading are filed more than two days prior to vessel lading, which makes it difficult for importers to compile and file the necessary cargo details on time.
“We’re going to change that so that the ISF filing date will be compared to the vessel departure date,” said Customs and Border Protection’s Steven Silvestri during a presentation to the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of America conference in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
The rule allows the border agency to issue penalties of up to $5,000 per violation. Silvestri clarified that the penalty applies to mistakes made in each transmission, not just the final ISF transaction. That means an importer or broker who files a submission with incorrect information and then files an amendment to that submission that also has incorrect information could be subject to $10,000 in penalties -- $5,000 for each transmission.
CBP has received more than 600,000 ISFs since Jan. 26, of which 87 percent have been accepted without errors, while 8.5 percent have been rejected, Silvestri reported.
Submissions have ramped up in recent weeks, with an average of 60,000 filings per week in the past month. The largest cause of errors is duplicate transmissions from impatient filers. Silvestri urged importers or third party filers to wait 20 to 30 minutes after filing to get a conformation from the system before attempting to file again.
CBP will begin sending out progress reports later this month to third party filers, who are supposed to break out the results of each customer and share them, he said.
For more information on Importer Security Filing, please visit the CBP website.
