Volume I, No. XXIV
Customs proposes to close the paper era for low-value parcels, and the cost of ending de minimis moves to the broker's desk
A CBP proposal published October 8 would require every shipment worth $2,500 or less, mail included, to be entered electronically by the time it arrives, under a bond. The agency's own analysis puts the net cost near $1.1 billion a year, against about $59 million in recovered duty.
Under a rule U.S. Customs and Border Protection proposed on October 8, a parcel that reaches an international mail facility with no entry on file would wait 15 days, then be treated as abandoned, and the Postal Service could destroy it or send it back1. That one provision states the purpose of the whole proposal. With the $800 de minimis exemption suspended and scheduled by statute to end, CBP projects about 32.7 million postal and 70.1 million type 11 informal shipments a year at current rates1. It proposes to do so by applying the formal-entry habits of electronic data, filing by arrival and a bond to every shipment worth $2,500 or less1. The policy question is no longer whether small parcels pay duty. It is who does the paperwork, how early, and who stands behind the debt if it goes unpaid.
The instrument: informal entry, bonds and the manifest
The proposal does not rest on the tariff statutes. It rests on three administrative provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930. Section 498, codified at 19 U.S.C. 1498(a)(1)(A), lets the government write rules for entry of merchandise valued at no more than $2,500, the “informal entry” regime, and section 498(b) allows it to import any of the formal entry requirements of sections 484 and 485 into those rules1. Section 623 (19 U.S.C. 1623) authorizes CBP to demand bonds “by regulation or specific instruction” to protect the revenue, and to set the amount owed on breach1. Section 431 (19 U.S.C. 1431) lets it specify what carriers must put on a manifest1.
That is a different footing from the one that removed de minimis in the first place. Executive Order 14324, signed July 30, 2025, used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to suspend duty-free de minimis treatment “regardless of value, country of origin, mode of transportation, or method of entry,” effective August 29, 20253. Executive Order 14388 of February 20, 2026 continued the suspension and, for postal items, set the duty at the rate in a separate proclamation of the same day, which CBP describes as a 10 percent surcharge under section 122 of the Trade Act of 19741,4. Congress then made the change permanent: section 70531(b) of Public Law 119-21 repeals the commercial-shipment exemption in 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(C) effective July 1, 20275. The executive orders decided that small parcels owe duty. The October proposal concerns the machinery for collecting it, and that machinery rests on customs statutes that do not depend on an emergency declaration.
The mechanism: what changes for type 11, and what replaces the mail worksheet
What changes for entry type 11?
Entry type 11 is the general informal entry for goods valued at $2,500 or less1. Today it may be filed up to 15 calendar days after arrival, on paper or electronically1. CBP proposes to require electronic filing, upon or before the date of importation1. Paper is already rare: of 52,450,418 type 11 entries filed from September 1, 2025 to May 31, 2026, only 73,534 were manual, or 0.14 percent1. Filers would also have to name a “final deliver-to party,” with an address, whenever that party differs from the ultimate consignee on the entry summary1.
Two other changes matter for traders in goods under tariff actions. CBP would delete the $250 ceiling on informal entry for merchandise classified in Chapter 99, Subchapters III and IV, of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, so that a shipment worth up to $2,500 and subject to Section 232 duties could be entered informally instead of formally1. And it would widen its power to demand formal entry from case-by-case decisions to blanket orders by importer of record, manufacturer, seller or category of goods1.
The right to file would also narrow. A consignee that is not the owner or purchaser, such as a foreign postal operator, the Postal Service, a freight forwarder or a carrier, would have to appoint a licensed customs broker to act as importer of record1. That ties low-value entries more closely to the importer of record identity that CBP moved in August to police, as this journal discussed in earlier coverage.
How would mail be entered?
Since the June 24 interim final rule, informal mail has been entered through a monthly international mail duty worksheet, sent by email as a spreadsheet on the 7th day of the month after arrival, with payment through Pay.gov2. CBP’s own assessment of that system is blunt. Most postal entries are released before the worksheet arrives, brokers filing it need not identify the importer or consignee, and between September 2025 and May 2026 only 67 percent of postal shipments went through any entry process at all1.
The proposal would replace the worksheet with entry type 13, an electronic informal mail entry that mirrors type 11, filed in the Automated Commercial Environment by arrival1. It adds two data elements: the shipper or sender, and the Universal Postal Union S-10 tracking number1. Carriers would have to report that same tracking number on the inward manifest, so CBP can match each parcel’s arrival to its entry1. CBP says a voluntary type 13 test was set to begin September 22, 2026, so that filers could try the process while the rule is pending1.
Bonds and liquidated damages
Every type 11 and type 13 entry would need a basic importation and entry bond, single transaction or continuous1. Mail entries already require one under the June rule2. For breaches of most bond conditions on these entries, liquidated damages would be the value of the goods or $1,000, whichever is greater, and for restricted or prohibited goods or alcohol, three times value or $1,0001. Without a floor, CBP argues, breaches on low-value shipments produce claims worth less than the cost of collecting them1.
The effect: who carries the cost
CBP’s regulatory analysis is unusually frank about the balance. It puts the present value of the rule’s net cost over 2026 to 2035 at $9.30 billion at a 3 percent discount rate, or $7.72 billion at 7 percent, and the annualized net cost at about $1.09 billion a year1. The rule is classed as economically significant and was reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget1.
Most of that cost sits in the mail. CBP assumes every type 13 filer would hire a broker and adds $30 per entry for brokerage, a figure it takes from a 2024 National Bureau of Economic Research working paper by Pablo Fajgelbaum and Amit Khandelwal, plus $9.72 in staff time for the entry forms, for $39.72 per mail entry1. Against 28,860,463 projected postal entries in 2027, the broker fee alone comes to $865.8 million1. The scale of the per-parcel charge is clearest set beside the parcels: from September 2025 through May 2026, shipments worth $30 or less were 79 percent of postal volume but 16 percent of its value1. CBP adds that the burden would fall on some mix of importers, senders, final recipients and brokers that it cannot estimate1.
The bond requirement weighs on a narrower group. About 2.3 million type 11 entries, 3.31 percent of CBP’s 2026 projection, came in without a bond in the year to July 31, 2026, from 68,701 importers of record1. CBP estimates the new bond premiums at $9,276,484 a year at current volumes, an average of $3.99 per affected entry but $55.57 for importers whose cheapest option is a single transaction bond1. The Postal Service told CBP its systems work would cost $12 million to $20 million and take up to eight months1.
On the other side, CBP estimates that full compliance in the mail would raise duty collections by $58,619,087 a year, treated as a transfer, not a benefit, and it says it could not quantify the enforcement benefits1. Those rest on seizure data. In fiscal 2024, postal de minimis shipments were seized for narcotics at 277.8 per million, against 15.8 for type 11 entries and 2.6 for formal entries1. The agency also concedes that 15-day abandonment would leave “some importers” without their shipments1. Of the 10 entities that have filed the mail worksheet, six are small U.S. businesses, and CBP said it could not certify that the rule would spare small entities a significant economic impact1.
The longer view: from a $200 threshold to a bonded parcel
The arc is short. Congress raised the de minimis ceiling from $200 to $800 in 2016, and CBP’s 2019 entry type 86 test let qualifying low-value shipments clear electronically with minimal data1. Volume rose from 139 million de minimis shipments in 2015 to more than 1.36 billion in fiscal 20242. In January 2025, CBP proposed two rules, known as ELVS and TranSALS, that would have kept de minimis but demanded more data and excluded goods under Section 232, 201 and 301 actions; in June 2026 it called both “not the appropriate course of action at this time,” citing the executive orders and the statutory repeal2. The October proposal draws on the type 86 experience, with mandatory data, broker filing and arrival-time submission, while acknowledging that the test “proved insufficient” for its purpose1.
What CBP left open is the deadline. It weighed keeping the 15-day filing window, which would cost less, and rejected it because data received weeks after arrival is of little use for screening1. It asks commenters how filing by arrival would affect transit times by mode1. Comments are due December 7, 20261. The statutory repeal takes effect July 1, 20275, and CBP’s cost tables assume its own rule would apply from 20271.