[sc68cal]

The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer. So the importers are the one that had the tax collected from them and would be getting the refund.

The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.

[sowbug]

To the CPAs among us: will the refunded import taxes be treated as extra profit for all the importers who paid them?

I could see an argument that they don't have a legal obligation to pass the refunds on to their customers, any more than my local grocery store owes me 5 cents for the gallon of milk I bought last year if the store discovers that their wholesaler had been mistakenly overcharging them.

[mattas]

The idea of getting a refund for mischaracterized tariffs is actually fairly common (it's called a duty drawback and there's a cottage industry around this). It's generally used when an importer incorrectly categorized their import under an HS code that has a higher duty than the correctly categorized HS code.

The difference this time is the scale is orders of magnitude larger. Will be interesting to see how they (importers and CBP) work through this.

[Animats]

A regular importer who routinely pays customs duties is now owed money by Customs and Border Protection. Can they now set off future duties against the balance owed them? Normally, reciprocal debt cancellation is legal.

The U.S. Treasury has a whole system for this, but in the other direction. If the government owes you money, and you owe the government money, the Treasury will deduct what you owe from whatever they are paying out.[1] But they're not set up for that in the other direction.

[1] https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/TOP/

[Forgeties79]

Smart money is that they will make some token comment about "leave it up to the states" or lower courts and then do absolutely nothing about it

[aardvarkr]

The feds are the ones that control import duties, not the states. The courts will decide two years from now what to do.

[Forgeties79]

I get how it works, I’m mostly talking about the how admin will spin it/shirk responsibility

[jopsen]

> The difference this time is the scale is orders of magnitude larger.

The administration will just do nothing. They need 3 maneuvers for this to drag out longer than Trump 2.

There is no intention to follow the law here.

[sigwinch]

I wager he’ll:

1. Claim to refund the money to each taxpayer with a Trump-signed check.

2. The number of checks will not total $200 B. Any reporting to the contrary will take up space from the truth about Epstein.

3. Before 2028, a loyal SuperPAC will form with hundreds of billions in dark money.

[JKCalhoun]

"…refund the money to each taxpayer…"

I've got receipts.

Literally. I have receipts for hundreds of dollars where the tariff is itemized (from JLCPCB, etc.)

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I got charged a $600 tariff from UPS to ship a $30 25-pound sandbag into the US from Canada.

UPS didn't even deliver the product.

I'm suing them in small claims.

We'll see what happens.

I imagine that even after the ruling, our ass backwards legal system will somehow say this makes sense, even though the tariff rate was never near high enough for that bill to make any sense.

Further, they're going to get refunded the $10 it MIGHT have cost them.

[lostlogin]

> 25-pound sandbag into the US from Canada.

It's not the point, but why were you doing this? Surely internationally shipping a sack of sand is more painful than getting a local one?

[aiauthoritydev]

This could just be across the border.

[ignoramous]

> just be across the border.

It was interesting to see shops in the border towns of south & south east Switzerland buying & selling products from Italy, a relatively cheaper market.

[gambiting]

I mean, when I was young we lived in Poland right next to the border with Slovakia and we'd drive over once a week for groceries and to buy fuel because it was just so much cheaper over there. Nowadays it's the reverse since they got the Euro - most Polish shops near the border cater to Slovakian shoppers and even accept Euro for payment.

[aardvarkr]

Huh? In what world was the tariff on sand 2000%?

[jacobgkau]

It wasn't the tariff. UPS has been tacking on a ridiculously high paperwork fee for the service of processing tariff payments. Other shipping companies have also had fees, but UPS is the main one that's made it exorbitant and disproportionately higher than the tariff itself.

[qingcharles]

I'm thinking the delivery agents such as UPS, Fedex, USPS now need to sue the United States so they can pay back all the recipients the fees they charged, plus interest.

There are going to be a raft of class action suits based on this.

As one of my lawyers once said, the only winners here are the lawyers.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

“ As one of my lawyers once said, the only winners here are the lawyers.”

Congress is full of lawyers do it’s pretty natural that they make rules that favor lawyers.

[markbnj]

I suspect that my recent experience confirms this. Our daughter shipped two suitcases home from the UK, paying some local company for "door-to-door" delivery. They contracted with UPS who demanded an additional $32 when the first bag showed up. For the second she paid the same fee online so they wouldn't require a check at the door.

[sc68cal]

That's a great question. I would also love to know that answer. I agree with you that they're not going to share the refund if the importer was the middleman in the supply chain, and same thing if the importer was also the seller.

[lotsofpulp]

There is a 1099 specifically for money received from the government.

https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-g

[tim333]

I think the tax is basically on the profit made when you add up costs and expenses. Say:

Before: Importer pays China $10 for widget, pays $2 duty, sells to shop for $12 - profit zero, tax on that zero.

Now: Paid $10 for widget. Paid $2 duty, sold for $12, $2 refunded - profit $2, pays tax on the $2.

At least that's the normal way of doing accounting. There can be odd exceptions and complications in local laws.

[sowbug]

Yes, I think that's the starting point. Another part of my question was whether a CPA applying GAAP would recommend recognizing the $2 as other income, or else as a liability against a future claim from the customer who bought the widget and is now seeking a partial refund.

I did what passes for research these days and concluded that if the claim is "probable and estimable," then it could be recorded as a "contingent liability" rather than other income. Relevant facts would include whether the tariff refund included a pass-through refund mandate (unlikely with this administration), or whether class actions for refunds against merchants were pending (inevitable).

[tim333]

I imagine the government will provide some sort of guidance for that kind of stuff?

[nullhole]

Related question, unanswerable except maybe as a rough estimate: how much will it cost, in accountant/bookkeeper time, to do all the administrivia required to process all these refunds?

[jamincan]

It depends on the terms of the transaction. Most business-to-business transactions would have the importer responsible for duties, but many, maybe the majority of business-to-consumer transactions have taxes & duties covered by the exporter and included in the final price which would typically reflect the additional taxes & duties in the prices. In those case, the exporter would be the one refunded.

[aucisson_masque]

at the end of the day, it's average joe who bought his things more expensive, and he won't get back his money.

That's what matters, don't care if it's the seller or a middleman that gets this money.

That's really a shame for american citizens, i'd be furious if i was american.

[blurbleblurble]

Many are beyond furious

[ikiris]

Many voted for this

[cptroot]

Very few people voted for tariffs, specifically. They voted for a promise of a return to a world where they were on top.

[acuozzo]

> They voted for a promise of a return to a world where they were on top.

Very few were on top during The Gilded Age and it has been EXTREMELY clear for quite a long time now that the "Great" in M.A.G.A. is a reference to the 1880s, not the 1950s.

[watwut]

Where THEY were on top. Trump voting men wanted the world where they can rule over women. Trump voting whites voted to be over minorities. Trump voting christians want their religious state.

And so on and so forth. In each case, vote for Trump was to harm someone you look down at and to dominate over another group.

[scott_w]

No they absolutely did. Trump promised tariffs on multiple occasions: https://www.export.org.uk/insights/trade-news/us-presidentia...

When you vote, you vote for an entire platform and you especially vote for central campaign promises. You don’t get to say “I voted for a world where I’m on top” and then say “but not for the primary method the candidate promised to use!”

[riffraff]

tariff were promised and implemented by Trump in his first mandate too, if you voted for him, you mostly voted for America Great Again Through Tariffs.

After the liberation day tariffs were announced, 34% of the people thought they were good.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...

[__turbobrew__]

Project 2025 was publicly available prior to the election. Tariffs were one of the many policies within the larger plan. If you voted for Trump you are responsible for the Tariffs, this is not a hoodwink where Trump rug pulled everyone after getting elected — it was literally there in the open.

[deathanatos]

Even beyond/disregarding Project 2025, tariffs were a well-known part of the GOP platform in 2024; it was even included and discussed at the Presidential Debate. The Harris platform even called it a tax at that time, to attempt to make it quite clear to the voter who, in the end, would bear the cost, and the Trump platform equivocated on who would pay the tax to distract from that Harris was right.

Even if you knew nothing of Project 2025 (somehow), you were warned.

[mapontosevenths]

Trump believed that Obama was a secret Muslim infiltrate sent to destroy America because he's black, that's what they voted for. Racism.

The rest of it was just gravy.

[nurettin]

The problem is USA doesn't get good choices. Given the choice between a walking corpse and trump, they choose the corpse. Given the choice between a woman and trump, they choose trump.

[hermanzegerman]

Care to elaborate why a person is a bad choice because she is a women? Especially compared to someone who shits his own pants in the public?

[poisonarena]

This is loony, all these guys knew eachother for years before and have cordial if nor friendly relationships. The Clintons, Trump, Bushes, Obamas, etc.

[mapontosevenths]

In 2016 65% of Trump supporters believed Obama was secretly Muslim. [0]

Trump claimed that Obama was "the founder of Isis" and claimed MANY times that he was not born in the United States. [1]

So yes, he is completely loony... and very blatantly a racist who sends dogwhistles to other racists regularly.

No, he is not friends with Obama or Biden. In fact, Trump is the first president in 150 years to refuse to attend the inauguration of his competitor after losing. [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_religion_conspira...

[1] https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/508194635270062080

[2] https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/notably-absent-pres...

[aucisson_masque]

These people are not necessary against tariff, they are against paying more for their stuff and having it benefit some middleman because the current government messed up badly.

I can otherwise understand how people would agree on paying more for their stuff if it allows their fellow citizens to have a job.

[qingcharles]

Check Truth Social, many are livid that the tariffs were found illegal. A lot of supporters of the current government prefer to pay higher prices for goods.

[JKCalhoun]

(I'll just take your word for it.)

[qingcharles]

It's like a car crash, I have to rubberneck it sometimes for my own morbid curiosity.

[cyanydeez]

So they basically figured out how to bribe all these companies?

Such a kleptocracy.

[PowerElectronix]

i read that Costco could actually refund everyone, as they can know exactly who bought what.

If they do, that's another matter, but they definitely can.

[latexr]

> The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer.

So it matters how we’re interpreting “paying”. One way to look at it is that if the cost was passed on to the consumer, the consumer paid it. The importer simply handed over the money.

[DivingForGold]

and if so, do you really believe any importers who paid the tariff will further refund back to the consumer ? It's eventually a net win for the importer.