IEEPA TARIFF REFUND RECOVERY
You paid the tariff, even if you're not the importer.
Here is how that money gets recovered.
If your supplier was the Importer of Record, CBP's refund goes to them. We recover your share.
No retainers. No hourly billing. You pay nothing unless we recover.
The Background
The refund is flowing back to your supplier — not to you.
Between February 2025 and February 2026, importers paid more than $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs. On February 20, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled those tariffs unlawful. CBP is now refunding the money, but only to the Importer of Record (IOR) who filed the entry.
If you bought products from a domestic distributor, brand, or supplier that acted as the Importer of Record, and they passed the tariff cost through to you — whether as a line item surcharge, a mid-year price increase, or a quiet bump in unit pricing — you absorbed the duty. The refund is flowing back to them, not to you.
IEEPA tariffs collected nationwide between Feb 2025 – Feb 2026, now being refunded to Importers of Record
Range of IEEPA tariff rates across 60+ countries over the life of the program, from the universal baseline to peak country-specific rates
You can expect to recover ~5% of all your spend on capital expenditures, materials, products and supplies from your suppliers
Why you cannot file with CBP directly
The CAPE refund portal accepts claims only from the Importer of Record named on the entry summary. Downstream buyers, distributors, retailers, and end users have no direct administrative pathway with U.S. Customs.
How recovery works
Our five step process
The path runs through commercial channels, not CBP. The financial analysis is built by Sagemont using your data: purchasing reports, invoices, purchase orders, supply agreements, tariff-related communications, and pricing notices. We map the pass-through, quantify your share, and work with your supplier for the portion of the refund attributable to costs you actually paid.
- 1
Intake & Estimates
Sagemont analyzes a single vendor transaction report, accompanied by all pricing communications from vendors, and provides estimates on the tariff recovery per supplier.
- 2
Full Tariff Analysis
We pull invoices, purchase orders and vendor contracts to build on the initial analysis and map the exact tariff pass-through per supplier.
- 3
Supplier Communication
We work with your suppliers on your behalf to present the analysis and follow up.
- 4
Methodology Review
Our team reviews and validates the supplier's refund calculation and allocation against our analysis.
- 5
Tariff Refund Recovery
Recovered funds flow to you.
Why Sagemont
Built for recovery work
Credits and incentives recovered for clients
Businesses served across industries
In-house CPAs and attorneys working every claim — not outsourced
Sagemont has spent years finding money that belongs to our clients and bringing it back. IEEPA downstream recovery is the newest application of that same work — we know how suppliers structure pass-throughs, how supply agreements are written, and where the leverage is.
We handle everything from intake through resolution. Most clients spend less than a few hours on the entire engagement. We do the rest, on contingency.
Contingency fees
No Recovery. No Fee.
We operate on a 100% contingency fee structure. There are zero upfront costs — if there is no recovery, you owe absolutely nothing.
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