Your CargoCleared.Your QuestionsAnswered.Your DeadlineMet.
HTS classification, ISF filing, duty drawback, and FDA holds — handled before your demurrage clock runs out. Mid-market importers, DDP brands, and freight forwarders trust us with the paperwork that can cost six figures if it's wrong.
Institutional Partners & Regulatory Agencies
The ISF Window Is 24 Hours.
Miss It and Pay $5,000.
The Importer Security Filing — CBP's "10+2" requirement — must reach the National Targeting Center at least 24 hours before vessel loading at the foreign port. Not 24 hours before arrival. Before loading.
Most first-time importers discover this after the fact. A late, incomplete, or inaccurate ISF triggers a $5,000 per-violation penalty and can result in a cargo hold the moment your container hits U.S. waters.
CBP penalty for each late, inaccurate, or incomplete ISF filing. Repeat violations escalate. We have a zero-late record on managed entries.
he importer had been bringing in upholstered wooden dining chairs from Vietnam for three years. Same supplier, same product, same HTS code their freight forwarder had used since the first entry. The code was 9403.60.8081 — wooden furniture, other — which carried a 0% duty rate. Clean, simple, uncontroversial.
What nobody had checked was the chair's construction. The frames were primarily metal, with wooden accents. Under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule's General Rules of Interpretation, the essential character of the merchandise — metal — controlled classification. The correct code was 9403.50.9042. Duty rate: 25%, plus a 25% Section 301 tariff on goods of Chinese origin. The supplier had subcontracted the metal fabrication to a Chinese factory.
"Three years of entries. Every one of them wrong. CBP had the authority to go back five years."
CBP's audit was triggered by a routine Focused Assessment — not a tip, not a complaint. The agency's algorithms had flagged the importer's commodity description as inconsistent with declared value. An import specialist requested documentation. The paper trail collapsed immediately.
By the time the importer called Clearance, the exposure calculation was $220,000 in retroactive duties, interest, and potential penalties under 19 U.S.C. § 1592 for negligence. The company's annual revenue was $4.2 million. This was an existential event.
