The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs. Your refund doesn't file itself.

Yes, and you can verify every piece without us. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs, invalidating the 2025-26 IEEPA tariffs. CBP's refund process is documented on its official IEEPA Duty Refunds page, and its CAPE claim system has been live inside the ACE portal since April 20, 2026. FlatClaim is software that prepares your claim file from your own entry data; it is operated by Oakwell Partners Inc. We never touch your money or your government accounts.

No. Refunds are not automatic. The Importer of Record, or the customs broker who originally filed the entries, must submit a CAPE declaration (a CSV file, maximum 9,999 entries per file) in their own ACE Secure Data Portal account. As of late April 2026, only about 75,300 declarations had been filed against roughly 330,000 eligible importers. If nobody files for your entries, the money stays with the government.

Maybe, and you can check in five minutes: ask your broker whether they have submitted a CAPE declaration covering your entries, and ask for the acceptance confirmation from ACE. Many brokers are not filing these claims. If yours already did, you don't need us, and our free eligibility check will tell you exactly that, at no charge.

Deadlines are rolling, not one fixed date. Entries that have been finally liquidated must be protested within 180 days of liquidation, or the refund right for those entries can be lost. Because entries liquidate on different dates, claims are expiring every week. The sooner you check, the less you leave at risk.

ACE (the Automated Commercial Environment) is CBP's online portal where importers manage their customs business. CAPE is the claim system CBP runs inside ACE for IEEPA duty refunds; it has been live since April 20, 2026. A CAPE declaration is the actual claim: a CSV file listing the entries you're claiming refunds on, maximum 9,999 entries per file, submitted in your own ACE portal account. Preparing that file correctly is the painful step, and it's the step FlatClaim does for you.

CBP pays refunds by ACH directly to the importer, with statutory interest, typically 60 to 90 days after the CAPE declaration is accepted. FlatClaim includes a tracker so you know where your claim stands until the deposit lands.

Because the percentage model is indefensible on this work. Contingency refund services charge 15 to 25% of your refund. On an average claim of about $151,000, that's $22,000 to $38,000 for the same paperwork. FlatClaim's Standard tier is $2,995, flat. On that same claim you keep $148,005, plus the interest. One fair price, and every recovered dollar stays yours.

We include a full guided path for creating one. Most users with an existing ACE account go from payment to a ready-to-file claim in under 30 minutes; if you need to set up an account first, the walkthrough takes you through every screen.

Only your entry data; we show you exactly where it lives in ACE. We never need your bank details, your books, your ACE login, or a power of attorney. Your data is encrypted, used only to compute and validate your claim file, and purged after your refund lands.

Some entry types (drawback-flagged, reconciliation, and others) await a Phase 2 that CBP has not yet opened. The free eligibility check detects those automatically and waitlists them at no charge. We alert you the day CBP opens the window.

That's covered by our workmanship warranty: if CBP rejects your file for a format error, we regenerate it corrected, free, until it's accepted. And the bigger guarantee sits behind it: if your CAPE claim, filed by you, results in no refund, your fee comes back in full.