How to File a CAPE Tariff Refund Through CBP’s ACE Portal

If your company already has an ACE Portal account with the Importer sub-account, skip to Step 2. If you have an ACE account but no Importer sub-account, you need to request the sub-account through CBP’s “Managing an ACE Portal Account” webpage. If you have neither, here is the path that worked when we ran it.

Go to CBP’s Applying for an ACE Secure Data Portal Account page and use the Importer Application — not the more prominent Application for All Other Trade Activities. The Importer Application is specifically scoped to trade parties that already have a Form 5106 record on file with CBP and do not yet have an ACE Portal top account.

The first screen asks for three things: company name, Importer Record Number (your IRS EIN, your CBP-assigned IR number, or your SSN if you import as an individual), and a business email that the Top Account Owner will use to log in. The IR# field accepts three formats — NN-NNNNNNNXX, NNN-NN-NNNN, or YYDDPP-NNNNN— and the form will tell you if your input doesn’t match one of them.

Submit the form. The system runs four checks behind the scenes: that your email isn’t already tied to an existing ACE Portal user, that the IR# and company name match an existing 5106 record, that the 5106 record has a current Point of Contact (POC) email, and that the IR isn’t already linked to a top account.

If everything checks out, CBP sends a verification code to the POC email on the 5106 record. This code is valid for ten minutes. If you’ve coordinated with whoever owns that mailbox in advance, you can paste it in immediately. If you haven’t, plan to. Hitting Back or letting the timer expire restarts the entire process and wipes the fields you already filled.

After the code is accepted, the form expands into the full account-owner intake screen. Company Name, IR#, and Business Email are pre-filled and locked. You add organizational structure, optional fiscal year-end and DUNS number, the Account Owner’s first/middle/last name, full mailing address, and a business phone.

The final screen is the authorization page. The Account Owner Name field is pre-filled from your previous entries. The Acknowledgement Date is today’s date, also locked. Read the Privacy Act Statement, check the box authorizing creation of the top account and Trade Account Owner role, and click Submit.

You’ll then receive an email from [email protected]with the subject “ACE Secure Data Portal account has been created.” The email contains your assigned Account ID (a short alphanumeric string), your name as it will appear in the system, and the timestamp of when the account was provisioned.

CBP issues every CAPE refund through ACH to a U.S. bank account on file. If you skip this step, your CAPE Declaration can still be accepted, your entries can still be reliquidated, and you will still not see a refund. Instead the system marks your refund as rejected and you have to re-enroll and chase it through the Replacement Refund process. Do this step before you upload your Declaration.

Inside the ACE Portal, log in as the Trade Account Owner (TAO) for your company. Navigate to your Importer sub-account view and find the ACH Refund Authorization tab. There you can view, add, and update the U.S. bank account information you want CBP to deposit refunds into. You only need standard ACH credentials: routing number, account number, and account type (checking or savings).

Once your bank details are saved, you can monitor refund activity through ACE Reports. The REV-603 Trade Refund report covers successful refunds. The REV-613ACH Rejected Refunds report flags refunds that bounced because the recipient wasn’t enrolled — which is exactly what happens if you forget this step.

Every entry where you paid IEEPA duties has a CBP Form 7501 (Entry Summary) on file. Your customs broker filed it when the goods cleared. The CAPE Declaration only asks for one piece of data from that form: the Entry Number from Block 1.

Block 1 is an 11-character alphanumeric code with a defined structure: a three-character filer code, followed by a seven-digit entry number, followed by a one-digit check digit. CBP’s instructions show the format with hyphens (for example, B76-0324527-8), but in practice you will see entry numbers written several ways — with hyphens, with a space and a hyphen (K42 5917628-3), or as a continuous string. The CAPE Declaration accepts the format as it appears on your Form 7501 record.

Pull every Form 7501 where IEEPA duties were paid. If you work with a customs broker, they can export this list for you in minutes — ask for “all entries with HTS Chapter 99 IEEPA provisions” between the dates of the IEEPA orders and the date the courts vacated them.

While your 7501s are out, two other fields will be useful for the ACE Portal application itself, separate from the CSV: Block 27 is the Importer Number — your IRS EIN, formatted as NN-NNNNNNN. Block 30 is the Importer of Record Name and Address. The portal application asks for both. Do not confuse them with Block 26 (Consignee Number, which is a different EIN) or Block 23 (Secondary Country of Smelt, which is aluminum-specific).

The CAPE Declaration is a simple comma-separated values file. CBP provides the template through the “Upload” button in the CAPE tab of your Importer sub-account; the downloaded file is named ACEP_CapeEntryNumberUploadTemplate.csv. CBP’s documentation is explicit on this point: “CBP will not require any other information in the .CSV file.” Do not add columns. Do not change the header. Anything extra fails validation.

The format is a single column, with the header Entry Number on row 1 and one entry per row after that. Here is what an actual file looks like:

 1Entry Number
 2K42 5917628-3
 3K42 5917635-1

Each Declaration has a hard limit of 9,999 entries. If you have more than that, file multiple Declarations. There is no penalty for splitting; CBP processes them independently.

One detail brokers should know: a single CAPE Declaration is not limited to one IOR. A licensed customs broker can include up to 9,999 entries spanning various IORs in one file, as long as the broker was the original filer for each of those entries. If your broker has been filing for dozens of small importers across the same IEEPA window, this is the most efficient way to handle the bulk recovery.

With your bank details saved and your CSV built, navigate to the CAPE tab inside your Importer sub-account view. Click Upload, select your ACEP_CapeEntryNumberUploadTemplate.csv file, and submit.

The portal validates each entry against CBP’s records. If an entry on your list isn’t actually an IEEPA-duty entry, wasn’t filed by you (or by you as the broker), or falls outside Phase 1 eligibility — already liquidated for more than 90 days, warehouse entry, suspended, or under extension — the system flags that line and rejects it. Valid entries move to acceptance.

Once your Declaration is accepted, ACE updates the affected entry summary lines automatically. The IEEPA Harmonized Tariff Schedule Chapter 99 provision is removed, the corresponding IEEPA duties are zeroed out, and an updated entry version is generated. CBP then either liquidates or reliquidates the entries depending on their current status, and your refund moves to issuance.