Tariff refunds in 2026: the pipeline is closing — what to do now

IEEPA tariff refunds have not ended, and no portal deadline has been published — but the pipeline is closing. As of September 11, 2026, August 2026 was the first month since April in which the government took in more customs duties than it paid back: $23.377B received against $10.541B refunded. About $115.078B has been refunded since the CAPE portal opened on April 20, 2026. If you overpaid, a claim is a CAPE Declaration filed by the importer of record or the filing broker through the ACE Portal — and the clock that matters is your entry’s liquidation status, not a calendar date.

What the August 2026 data actually says

Treasury’s Monthly Treasury Statement for August 2026, released September 11, 2026, is the first month that reads like the refund surge is behind us. Customs duties came in at $23.377B and refunds went out at $10.541B, leaving a net +$12.836B — the first net-positive month since April 2026. In June the same ledger was −$25.556B.

How to read these numbers. The label “tariff receipts” here is Treasury’s MTS Customs Duties line: all customs duties — IEEPA, Section 232, Section 301 and ordinary duties together — not IEEPA alone. There is no IEEPA-only monthly figure in the primary data, so every number in the table inherits that basis. The $166B refund total is the one exception to the sourcing rule on this page: no primary document we could reach carries the number, so it is attributed to the reporting rather than asserted. And three different refund totals are circulating on three different bases — paid (Treasury MTS), accepted for processing and certified to Treasury (CBP court filings). They are not comparable, and this page does not add them together.

The monthly series behind the headline

Two things fall out of the series. Receipts are steady: every month since April 2026 has landed between $20B and $25B of gross customs receipts — and March too, for six consecutive months. (Treasury’s own line shows the streak at six; counts that start from April will say five. Either way, the receipts side has not moved much.) Refunds were the entire story, and they peaked hard: June’s $49.183B is 4.7× August’s $10.541B.

One figure worth separating: monthly receipts peaked in October 2025, and the widely quoted $31.354B for that month is the net line. Gross receipts that month were $33.090B. Quoting the $31.354B next to gross $20–25B months compares two different measures.

Refund-status timeline: February 2026 to today

What “tapering” means if you are a claimant

Tapering describes the refund series, and the series supports it: $49.183B in June, $33.381B in July, $10.541B in August — down about 79% from the peak in two months. The honest reading is that the backlog is being worked off and fewer claims are left in the queue.

What tapering does not mean: that the programme has closed. CBP’s IEEPA refund FAQ still lists entry types queued for future CAPE deployments — type 09 reconciliation summaries, drawback-designated entries, warehouse entries (types 21 and 22), entries covered by an open protest, entries not filed in ACE, AD/CVD entries pending liquidation, and entries for which liquidation is final.

What it means in practice. If your entries sit inside Phase 1 scope, the question is not “is the window open” but “has my entry aged past 80 days since liquidation”. If they sit outside it, filing an ineligible claim gets you a rejection, not a refund, and the route may be different or legal. And note what a net-positive month is: a statement about the government’s cash flow, not about your claim. The 11-month deficit of $1.966T is on the same statement, one month before the fiscal year ends.

What to do now if you overpaid IEEPA duties

1. Confirm you are the party who can file. Only the importer of record, or the licensed customs broker who filed the entries, may submit a CAPE Declaration. Attorneys cannot file on an importer’s behalf. Refunds go to the importer of record or the CBP Form 4811 notify party — consumers cannot claim, even where the duty was passed through in the price they paid. Verify your position with CBP or a licensed customs broker.
2. Get your ACE Portal account and ACH details current before anything else. Refunds are paid by ACH only, and CBP will hold a refund until current US bank details are on file. This is not a formality: CBP’s own August 2026 court filing reported roughly 22,170 refunds worth about $1.7B untransmitted for missing ACH information (secondary source — The Tariff Bureau, IEEPA refund updates (Aug 2026)). Verify your ACE account status with CBP or a licensed customs broker.
3. Check whether your entries are in Phase 1 scope. Phase 1 covers certain unliquidated entries and entries liquidated within the preceding 80 days. The 80-day figure exists so CBP still has time to reliquidate by day 90 under 19 U.S.C. § 1501. An entry older than that is not a Phase 1 claim. Verify each entry’s liquidation status with CBP or a licensed customs broker — this is the step importers most often get wrong.
4. File the CAPE Declaration through the CAPE tab in the ACE Portal — not through ABI. It is a CSV of entry numbers; CBP requires no other fields, and each declaration carries up to 9,999 entries. Two hard limits: an accepted declaration cannot be amended, and each entry may appear on only one accepted declaration, so screen the list before you submit. Verify the current CSV requirements in the portal with CBP or a licensed customs broker before filing.
5. Do not use a Post Summary Correction. CBP’s CAPE notice states that a PSC may not be used to initiate an IEEPA refund request. The refund channel is the CAPE Declaration; a PSC filed for that purpose will not start a refund.
6. Expect 60–90 days from acceptance, and interest with it. CBP says valid refunds are generally issued within 60–90 days of accepting a declaration, including about 45 days of CBP processing plus Treasury certification. Interest is included under 19 U.S.C. § 1505. Verify an individual claim’s status with CBP or a licensed customs broker.
7. If your entries are outside Phase 1, do not file to “get in the queue”. Finally liquidated entries are explicitly not in CAPE today and are listed under future deployments. For those, the only route in the record here is litigation: the CIT’s July 15 and July 21, 2026 orders directed reliquidation of finally liquidated entries for the plaintiffs in the coordinated suits. Whether a non-litigating importer can recover, and by what mechanism, is not established by any source reviewed for this page. Verify with CBP or a licensed customs broker — and, if the exposure is material, with trade counsel.

One more mechanic worth knowing before you file: if you owe CBP money, a refund can be offset against outstanding CBP debt under 19 CFR § 24.72, and non-IEEPA amounts stay due.

Refund questions importers are asking

Last verified: September 11, 2026 (ET). Every figure on this page was re-derived from the Treasury Fiscal Data API (MTS Table 4 and Table 1) on the day of publication, and every date was checked against the primary document named beside it. The one figure that is not from a primary source — the ≈$166B refund total ordered by the courts — is labelled as attributed. This page publishes no portal deadline, because no source publishes one.

Sources: Treasury Fiscal Data — MTS Table 4, “Customs Duties” · Treasury Fiscal Data — MTS Table 1 · CBP, IEEPA Duty Refunds (FAQ) · CBP, CAPE Trade User Information Notice (updated Jul 10, 2026) · CBP Fact Sheet, IEEPA Duty Refunds (Apr 17, 2026) · CBP CSMS #68396594 — CAPE available (Apr 20, 2026) · CBP CSMS #68340863 — CAPE deployment + CIT order text · Supreme Court, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, No. 24-1287 (Feb 20, 2026) · CRS Legal Sidebar LSB11398 · Davis Wright Tremaine (Mar 6, 2026) · Holland & Knight (Jun 15, 2026) · Morgan Lewis (Jul 2026) · Yahoo Finance, Sept 11, 2026 (offsetting refund figures) · The Tariff Bureau, IEEPA refund updates (Aug 2026)

Related on this site: Tariff exclusions and drawback — the other ways duty money comes back · The CIT de minimis ruling for importers · How import duties are calculated · Customs valuation methods · Tariff classification guide 2026 · How tariffs affect small-business imports · Tariff news and advisories