Customs changes may come through tariff bill

By Staff -- Logistics Management, 9/1/2000

The wide-ranging legislation that would change the way the U.S. Customs Service clears imports into the United States never made it to the floor of the Senate this session. But the shippers that developed the bill haven't given up the fight. The two dozen large importers that are members of BACM-the U.S. Business Alliance for Customs Modernization-have continued to lobby hard in Washington, and it looks as though they will get at least some of the changes they want, although as part of a different piece of legislation.

BACM's original proposal included a host of changes to the entry process, including new methods of calculating interest on duty payments, periodic filing of import entries and duty payments, and a reduction in the type and amount of data required by the Customs Service at the time of entry. (For details, see "Importers' bill seeks entry simplification," Logistics, May 2000, Page 23.)

When the shippers' bill, H.R. 4337, was stalled, BACM worked with House staffers to include at least some of their proposals in H.R. 4868, the miscellaneous tariff bill sent to the Senate in mid-July. The bill includes BACM proposals for an alternative method of calculating interest on underpayments of duties and fees, and a plan to handle multiple shipments of merchandise purchased and invoiced as a single entity under a single import entry.

The most far-reaching proposal in H.R. 4868, Section 1442, would require the secretary of the treasury to review customs procedures and related laws and regulations, with input from importers and interested third parties. Within six months of the bill's passage, the Treasury Department would have to report to Congress and recommend changes to reduce reporting and record-retention requirements, sever the link between data required to determine merchandise admissibility and data for other purposes, streamline the data-collection process, and allow periodic filing of entry data.

Everything in Section 1442 was in the shippers' original bill, which would have made those changes mandatory. In the current proposal, U.S. Customs would instead be required to study and recommend how to implement those changes. That indirect approach represents "an excellent springboard" for getting more comprehensive legislation passed in the next Congress, says BACM Chairman James P. Finnegan, director of international trade and compliance in the law department of Sony Electronics in San Diego.

BACM is working with Senate Finance Committee staffers on a final version of the bill, "revisiting" the sections of H.R. 4337 that were not brought into the current legislation, Finnegan says. Because there is so little time left in this congressional session, he adds, BACM's strategy is to find out how much of the original H.R. 4337 the Senate is willing to add to the tariff bill. The trick is not to go too far, he says, forcing a conference to reconcile the House and Senate versions and reducing the likelihood that the bill could pass before Congress adjourns.