Small Businesses Are Owed Billions in Tariff Refunds — Here's the Deadline to Claim Yours

The Government May Owe Your Business Money — Here's How to Find Out

If your business paid tariffs on imported goods in 2025 or early 2026, there's a real chance some of that money is coming back — but only if you file the right paperwork before a strict, unforgiving deadline. The Supreme Court ruled in February 2026 that the sweeping tariffs President Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) were illegal, opening the door to what researchers estimate could be $160 billion to $175 billion in refunds. Months later, most of that money still hasn't reached the small businesses that paid it.

What the ruling actually said

In a 6-3 decision issued February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not give the president the power to impose tariffs of indefinite scope on virtually all imports. The law was written for narrower emergency actions, not as a standalone tariff authority. The ruling didn't automatically issue refunds — it struck down the legal basis for the tariffs and left the process for recovering money already paid to a separate claims system run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The scale of the money involved is enormous. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates businesses could be owed up to $165 billion for IEEPA tariffs paid in 2025 and early 2026. The first successful refund claims started landing in company bank accounts around May 12, 2026, roughly three weeks after the CBP claims system opened to importers and their customs brokers.

A small business that's already acting on it

Alexandra Fine, CEO of the consumer goods company Dame, didn't wait for a government refund before returning money to her own customers. Dame had added a $5 "tariff surcharge" to purchases in 2025 to offset roughly $70,000 in IEEPA-related tariff costs on products manufactured in China. After the Supreme Court ruling, Fine began issuing automatic refunds directly to customers who'd paid the surcharge. "If somebody charges you something and it's unlawful, they should give you your money back," she told CBS News. In total, Dame paid roughly $100,000 in tariffs last year, with about $70,000 of that tied to the now-invalidated IEEPA duties.

Not every business can move that fast, and most owners are still waiting on their own refund from the government before they can consider passing anything back to customers. But Fine's approach illustrates the two-track problem facing small businesses right now: figuring out what you're owed from CBP, and separately deciding whether and how to make customers whole for tariff costs passed along to them.

How to actually file a claim

Refunds aren't automatic. Importers have to file a formal protest with CBP under 19 U.S.C. § 1514, using CBP Form 19, to contest duties already paid on a specific entry of goods. A few details matter more than people expect:

• The clock starts on the liquidation date of the entry — not the date you imported the goods, not the date you paid the duty, and not the invoice date. Liquidation is a specific customs milestone that can happen months after a shipment arrives.
• You have exactly 180 days from that liquidation date to file. CBP does not grant extensions on this deadline, even for a strong legal claim.
• Once filed, CBP can take up to two years to review a protest, though many importers track claim status through the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) portal in a matter of weeks to months.
• If you used a licensed customs broker to import your goods, they likely have your entry and liquidation records on file and can help identify which shipments still fall within the 180-day window.

Because the deadline is tied to liquidation, not the original shipment date, business owners who assume they've "missed the window" on 2025 tariffs are often wrong — some entries from mid-to-late 2025 may not have liquidated yet, meaning the 180-day clock hasn't started for those shipments at all.

Complications you should know about before you file

The administration has signaled it intends to appeal a lower court order that would let all businesses that paid the invalidated tariffs seek refunds, not just the companies that were plaintiffs in the original lawsuits. That appeal creates some uncertainty about the ultimate process, though it does not currently stop CBP from accepting and processing protests under the existing 180-day rule.

It's also worth separating this refund process from other tariffs still in effect. New duties of 10% to 12.5% on imports from more than 60 countries took effect under a different legal authority, Section 301 of the Trade Act, in July 2026. Those tariffs are unrelated to the IEEPA refund process and are not affected by the Supreme Court's ruling — they're a separate, ongoing cost, not money you can claim back.

What to do this week if you import goods

Start by pulling your import records for 2025 and early 2026, or asking your customs broker to do it for you. For each entry that involved IEEPA-related tariffs, you'll want the liquidation date, since that's what determines your 180-day filing window. If you don't have a customs broker, a trade attorney or licensed customs broker can typically review your entry history and identify which shipments are still eligible before flagging any that have already passed the deadline.

While you're reviewing your import costs, it's also a good time to check your books more broadly. Comparing tariff costs against your profit and loss statement from the affected periods can help you see exactly how much margin those duties ate into, which matters both for the refund claim itself and for pricing decisions going forward. If a refund does come through, routing it into a dedicated line in your business bank account rather than general revenue makes it easier to track and, if you passed the cost on to customers, easier to decide how much of it you owe them back.

Don't count on your broker to flag it automatically

Customs brokers handle a high volume of entries and don't always proactively revisit closed shipments once duties are paid, especially for smaller import volumes where the dollar amount on any single entry looks minor. It's worth explicitly asking your broker to run a report of every entry from 2025 and early 2026 that included IEEPA-based duties, sorted by liquidation date, rather than assuming they'll surface it on their own. For businesses that import through a freight forwarder or a larger logistics platform rather than a dedicated customs broker, that request may need to go directly to whoever filed the entries with CBP on your behalf.

If your business no longer works with the broker who handled the original entries — because you've switched vendors, changed suppliers, or stopped importing altogether — you can still request your entry records directly from CBP or through the ACE portal, though the process is slower without a broker's help navigating entry numbers and documentation.

The bottom line

Billions of dollars in tariff refunds are available to businesses that paid IEEPA duties in 2025 and early 2026, but the money doesn't come automatically and the 180-day filing window doesn't wait for you to get organized. If you import goods and paid tariffs during that window, check your liquidation dates now — not because the process is easy, but because it's the only way to find out if you're one of the businesses owed money the government has already admitted it collected illegally.

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