Duty Drawback Expertise

Thank you for tuning in with us today. I'm Carrie Irwin with International Tariff Management, and I'm the director of sales. Today, we're going to discuss destruction, drawback opportunities for all our importers and exporters out there. My guest today is Jill La Madeleine, who is the vice president and a licensed customs broker with ITM. Jill has been with ITM for over 25 years and works regularly with destruction drawback. 

Hello, Jill. 

Hi, Kerry. Thanks for having me today. 

Great to have you. Could you tell us what is destruction Drawback destruction? 

Drawback is the eligibility to claim drawback on items that are destroyed in the United States that have once been imported and duty paid. So for the purposes of drawback, a lot of claimants are aware that you can import a product into the country, pay a duty on it and export it.

 But you can also import product into the United States, destroy it in the United States so completely that it has no commercial value. And also claim drawback on those products that are destroyed. Great. Could you tell us why would a company destroy their goods? There are various reasons that a company would destroy their goods. The number one reason would be that they're defective, that they were imported and they didn't meet Specification.

 They had been destroyed, not destroyed. They had been ruined in some way in the warehouse also for food items that have expired. One may want to destroy them in the United States and take advantage of duty. Drawback or items could be outdated and no longer salable because they're out of fashion or outdated. What types of industries and or products do you feel take advantage of destruction drawback the most?

 I would say that the ones who take advantage the most are food and edible items. For example, we have a dairy company that we had worked with. They were exploring the opportunity of opening a warehouse in the United States. Before they did that, they wanted to see if there was a market for their product. So they imported a whole bunch of yogurt and they sold some domestically.

And throughout the course of doing studies and finding out if there was a market for it, a lot of that yogurt expired and clearly they couldn't sell it at that point and they weren't going to ship it back out of the country. So we put together a duty drawback program for them, and they destroyed the the expired yogurt.

And we were able to recover over $1,000,000 in duty for them just on the imported yogurt that was destroyed in the United States. That's great for them, huh? Yes. Yeah, It was a very good little program. I know, too. I'm from the fashion industry, and I know that fashion and textiles will do destruction due to "deadstock" things not moving.

And then also luxury brands would rather destroy products than risk products such as logo, purse, getting into the wrong hands and selling authentic goods at a discount. They really do not want to devalue their brand right? That makes perfect sense. And we've worked with some companies in that situation where they've wanted to control who got their hands on their their products, and they would rather destroy them in the United States than have them go for retail.

Yes. What is the process? What are they going to have to go through for destroyed merchandise? Well, when you claim duty drawback and destroyed merchandise, that's very similar to the the standard drawback program. So you want to apply for privileges because drawback is a privilege, not a rig

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

At ITM, we specialize in working with the United States Customs Service primarily in duty drawback. We work very closely with the United States Customs Service and we are active members of the Drawback Committee which help establish the regulations and laws that are used to allow people to get back.  You can recoup 99% of the duty paid on the import upon export. And while you can also often recover the merchandise processing fee and the harbor maintenance fee in unused drawback, those fees are not refundable and manufacturing drawback. 

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Jill La Madeleine, Samantha Vallee and Tracy Hudak discuss duty drawback and specifically, what a claimant can expect when they partner with ITM.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the Duty Drawback podcast from International Tariff Management here at ITM. We help our clients secure refunds and reductions of duty burdens on imported and exported goods. With more than 40 years of classification, free trade and compliance experience, in each episode, we explore real life examples of how companies are taking full advantage of numerous programs in place for both importers and exporters and how these little known programs can yield substantial returns to their bottom lines.

Joining us today is Ryan Molling. Ryan is the supply chain manager at Infinite Objects. We've been working with Infinite Objects for a little over six months on the classification project, which has yielded a nice refund for them.  Infinite Objects has saved over $350,000 in tariffs based on reclassifying their imports over the last six months. We hope that our conversation today will offer  some insight into not only what it's like to work with ITM, but also the process of the client's involvement and, and most importantly, the economic advantage by reviewing your classifications and looking at the rulings for the product itself to determine if you're importing them correctly.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

A free trade agreement is an agreement between one, two or more countries. And the idea behind the free trade agreement is to foster financial benefits between the two participating countries. It allows countries to move goods and services through their borders, paying less duty than the normal transactions would take place. There are currently the United States currently has 14 free trade agreements which cover over 20 countries. These agreements help the countries deal with the United States and helps us move goods into their countries much swifter and at a better financial arrangement than without the free trade agreement.

The USMCA, which is the agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico, formerly NAFTA, carries four conditions that must exist in order for people to take advantage of USMCA. The goods must qualify according to the rules of origin Under the USMCA, they must ship from a USMCA country, which is Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. The USMCA declaration must be properly completed - that's something where we find a lot of errors. The importer must collect and maintain the support documentation to show that the goods qualify for free trade between the US, Mexico and Canada.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Every company who imports goods into the U.S. has a customs broker that must bring goods into the country and follow certain regulations. The classification process is very difficult. There are 99 chapters in the tariff that leads to over 10,000 different sections where goods can be classified. It's very important that the goods fall into the right classification. There are penalties and other ramifications, financially, that can occur if imported goods are not classified properly. That's where we come in. We are experts in the proper classification of imported goods and we ensure that companies minimize their import duties.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Does your company have a viable drawback opportunity?  ITM's panels of experts discuss new ways to claim Duty Drawback on your imported and exported goods.

Learn how much of the unclaimed $2.4 billion dollars for duty drawback might be yours.  In this episode, we discuss the following topics:

• Is your company missing out on a lucrative duty drawback program? 
  (75% of available drawback dollars go unclaimed) 
• Does your company sell domestically to customers who export?
• Manufacturing Drawback

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Ken Madsen, CEO of Dimension Polyant, explains the benefits of a Duty Drawback program to Jay Charkow, President of International Tariff Management. 

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.

Jay Charkow talks with Anthony Sargis, the Senior International Trade Specialist with the U.S. Department of Commerce about resources available to U.S. Exporters.

We hope you will gain some valuable insight into the world of customs tariffs. With all the supply chain challenges the world is facing, our aim is to maximize your duty drawback dollars and boost your bottom line. We hope you'll subscribe to our podcast to stay current with each new episode in which will unveil numerous ways to improve your international trade profitability. Thanks for listening.