December 11, 2019

Harmonized Tariff Schedule Unit of Quantity Change Effective January 1, 2020

CBP has just announced that to ensure that the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) is aligned with the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (TFTEA) that was signed into law on February 24, 2016, CBP has worked with the United State International Trade Commission and the United States Census Bureau to change HTSUS units of quantities (UOQ) that were previously listed as “X” to specific quantities, such as kilograms (“kg”), number (“No.”), etc.

The first HTSUS unit of quantity update was made on January 1, 2019, and converted all the dutiable ten digit statistical suffixes that previously had a UOQ of “X” to a specific quantity. The next update HTSUS UOQ update is scheduled to be implemented on January 1, 2020, and will convert all the remaining statistical suffixes with a UOQ of “X” to a specific quantity.

A copy of the timeline of events for the UOQ changes can be found here, and a copy of the list of HTSUS numbers to be effected on January 1, 2020 can be found here.

Please contact your V. Alexander account team with any questions and follow us on our website www.valexander.com for updates on this and other topics.

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January 2, 2019

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced last week that Harmonized System Update (HSU) 1820 was created on December 18 and contains 19,061 ABI records and 3,393 harmonized tariff records.

Two important notes to be aware of is the change in reporting quantities for the entry summary. The current reporting quantity of “X” is being replaced with actual units of measure, i.e., kg, no., doz., etc.

– All of the HTS lines with “X” as the current unit of measure that have duty rates will change to the new designated units of measure on January 1, 2019. Click here for the list of New Units of Measure for January 1, 2019.
– The duty rate lines that are “Free” will start using new units of measure on January 1, 2020.

A driving factor in this change is that for drawback duty calculations, CBP needs to have a specified unit of measure reported in every HTS tariff line in order to determine a unit value (per the Trade Enforcement and Trade Facilitation Act (TFTEA) of February 2016).

Should you have any questions about this change, please contact your account team.