Businesses Paid Billions in Tariffs the Court Says Were Illegal. Here’s How Refunds Would Work.

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The Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs on February 20, 2026, and said nothing about what happens to the money the government collected — CBP-reported IEEPA tariff collections ran approximately $133.5 billion through mid-December 2025, with Yale’s Budget Lab estimating $142 billion for the full year, though refund exposure projections have reached as high as $175 billion depending on methodology.

That silence is not a small oversight. For the approximately 301,000 U.S. Importers who paid these duties, the ruling gave them a legal right to a refund, but buried it under a maze of paperwork and deadlines. Many will get their money back. Some will not. The difference between those two groups has almost nothing to do with whether they were wronged. It has almost everything to do with whether they filed the right paperwork before a deadline most of them didn’t know existed.

This is a guide to how the refund process works, what the realistic timeline looks like, and where the whole thing is likely to break down. We covered the legal background in our earlier analysis of the refund exposure and the legal foundation for Trump’s tariff authority. What follows is the practical part: what importers must do right now.

The 180-Day Trap Most Importers Don’t Know About

Here is the single most important fact in this entire article: your right to contest a tariff has an expiration date, and that date may have already passed.

Under 19 U.S.C. § 1514, importers can file a “protest” challenging a customs decision. The statutory text of § 1514(c)(3) sets that window at 90 days from the date CBP officially “liquidates” an entry. Liquidation is the moment CBP finalizes the tariff amount owed on a shipment. By statute (19 U.S.C. § 1504), it must occur within one year of entry, with possible extensions up to four years. The 314-day figure reflects a typical operational cycle, not a statutory deadline. It often happens earlier, meaning some protest deadlines may have already passed sooner than importers expect.

The earliest IEEPA tariffs took effect on February 4, 2025. That means the earliest affected entries began liquidating in mid-December 2025 — roughly six weeks after the Supreme Court heard oral argument on November 5, 2025. For an entry that liquidated on December 15, 2025, the protest deadline is approximately June 13, 2026. For one that liquidated January 15, 2026, the deadline is approximately April 15, 2026. The clock has been running for months, and most importers had no idea.

An importer who missed that window cannot simply walk into CBP after the ruling and say the tariffs were unconstitutional. CBP will point to the statute and say the assessment is final. The tariff is locked in. This is not a technicality that courts have been generous about waiving.

The businesses that saw this coming filed protective lawsuits in the Court of International Trade in December 2025 and January 2026, before the Supreme Court ruled. Reports suggest nearly 1,000 or more such cases had been filed by the ruling date. Named plaintiffs included large importers who had the legal resources to act early. Those who took no action, which is most of them, may have unknowingly given up their refund rights. They did so by treating tariff payments as a normal cost of doing business.

Justice Barrett raised this exact concern during oral argument. She asked the government’s attorney what happens to importers who might be “barred even if the Court rules in their favor” due to procedural requirements. The Court’s final opinion did not answer her question.

Three Pathways to a Refund: Mechanics, Timelines, and Risks

There is no single government refund window. Depending on where your entries stand with CBP right now, you face one of three routes, each with different steps, timelines, and risks.

The Administrative Protest

For entries that have already been liquidated and where the 90-day deadline has not yet passed, the administrative protest is the first step. File CBP Form 19 (or its electronic equivalent through the Automated Commercial Environment portal), identifying the specific entry, the legal basis for the challenge (the tariffs were unconstitutional), and the relief sought: a refund of duties plus interest.

CBP has up to two years to rule on a protest — though the Federal Circuit has ruled this timeframe is directory, not mandatory, so CBP is not legally bound to meet it — and in practice it often moves faster. Importers can also request accelerated disposition, requiring CBP to act within 30 days or the protest is deemed denied. An approved protest means a refund; a denial opens the door to an appeal in the Court of International Trade. The process sounds doable until you consider the scale. An importer with thousands of entries spread across a year of tariff collections has to identify each one, check its liquidation date, and calculate the individual deadline. They must then file before the clock expires. For a small business without a customs attorney on retainer, this is genuinely hard.

The Post-Summary Correction

For entries that have not yet been liquidated, there is a faster option: a Post-Summary Correction, or PSC. This is a request to fix the entry before it becomes final. PSCs must be filed within 300 days of the entry date OR at least 15 days before the scheduled liquidation date, whichever is earlier — only the more restrictive deadline controls.

The advantage is speed: if CBP accepts the correction, you avoid the formal protest process entirely and potentially get money back before liquidation occurs. The disadvantage is that it only works on unliquidated entries, and CBP can still reject the correction, sending you back to the protest pathway anyway.

Court of International Trade Litigation

For importers who missed the 180-day protest deadline, litigation in the Court of International Trade is the remaining option, but it requires filing suit within two years of when the tariffs were assessed. The reciprocal tariffs were published in the Federal Register on April 2, 2025, giving companies until approximately April 2027. The earlier country-specific tariffs (February 7, 2025) push that deadline to roughly February 2027.

Under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i), the CIT has broad residual jurisdiction over tariff disputes — though it applies only when other CIT jurisdictional provisions are unavailable, does not provide a standalone cause of action, and has been subject to significant judicial limitations. In December 2025, the tribunal issued a decision indicating it could order “reliquidation” of entries and issue refunds even for entries that had already been liquidated, if the underlying tariffs were struck down. The government reportedly agreed it would not contest the CIT’s authority to order such relief. The Trump administration has since signaled it may revisit that position. That shift comes as political pressure around the decision eases.

Litigation means legal fees and time. It is a last resort, not a smooth path, but for importers who missed administrative deadlines, it may be the only option left.

Who Gets the Refund Check

This is where the refund story gets truly complicated, and where a lot of businesses are going to be surprised.

Federal customs law is clear on one point: refunds go to the importer of record, the entity that officially brought the goods into the United States and paid estimated duties to CBP — though the importer of record may be a customs broker or other designated party rather than the actual owner of goods, creating potential complexity about who ultimately receives the funds. Not to the wholesaler who bought the goods. Not to the retailer who sold them. Not to the consumer who paid the higher price at checkout.

Consider a common scenario: a U.S. Retailer did not import anything directly. It bought goods from a foreign supplier who imported them, paid the IEEPA tariffs, and then passed those costs along through higher wholesale prices. The retailer, in turn, passed them to consumers. Now the supplier will receive a refund from CBP. Whether the supplier owes any of that money to the retailer depends entirely on the terms of their supply contract. CBP will not sort out that question. The retailer would have to sue to recover any share.

This supply-chain pass-through problem is one reason the actual amount of refunds flowing to parties who directly paid CBP may be lower than the headline $175 billion figure. Estimates of realistic refund exposure range from $133.5 billion in confirmed CBP collections through mid-December 2025 to $175 billion in Penn Wharton’s projected refund exposure. The gap reflects missed protest deadlines and supply-chain complications. Our earlier coverage of the fiscal impact has more on how that number was calculated.

For retailers who clearly charged customers a “tariff surcharge” and then receive a refund without passing it back, there is legal risk under state consumer protection laws. California, Illinois, and New York have strong consumer protection laws that could support class action claims. No such consumer class action complaints had been filed as of the ruling date, though nearly 1,000 or more importer lawsuits had already been filed at the CIT before the ruling date. Lawyers who bring these kinds of cases say the claims are difficult to prove. Even so, the exposure is real enough that retailers should be reviewing how they recorded and passed on tariff costs now.

“The process being difficult to administer doesn’t mean the government has the right to hold on to fees that were collected unlawfully,” said Alexis Early, a trade law partner at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner. The same logic, she implied, could apply to businesses that collected tariff surcharges from customers and then received refunds from the government.

The Interest Question: $10 to $20 $10 Billion More

Once the government issues a refund, it owes interest on the money it wrongfully held. Under 19 U.S.C. § 1505(c), CBP must refund excess duties, plus interest on that amount. The applicable rate is currently 6% per year for corporations and 7% for non-corporations, set quarterly by Treasury based on a benchmark interest rate set by the federal government.

On a $1 million tariff refund owed to a corporation, with interest building over 12 months at 6%, the government owes an additional $60,000. Scale that across $133.5 billion or more in refunds. Most payments will likely take 12 to 24 months to process. At that pace, interest alone could add $10 to $20 billion to the government’s total liability.

The Supreme Court’s opinion does not specify exactly when interest starts building. It is unclear whether the clock runs from the date of original payment, the date of protest filing, the date of the ruling, or the date of actual refund issuance. That uncertainty will generate its own litigation. Importers will argue for the date of original payment, the most favorable position. The government will argue for something later. Expect this to be fought out in the Court of International Trade for years.

Timeline for Refund Payments

CBP processes roughly 3 to 4 million customs entries per month under normal conditions. Adding a specialized refund process for potentially billions of dollars across hundreds of thousands of entries onto that workload would strain the agency in ways that have no real precedent. The closest historical comparison is the refund of Section 201 steel tariffs in the early 2000s after those were struck down. That case involved a smaller volume and simpler mechanics.

There is also a budget problem. Treasury does not have an unlimited pool of money to pay refunds. If CBP issues them at scale and Treasury lacks appropriated funds to cover the tab, the administration would need to seek extra funding approved by Congress, a step it will likely resist for as long as possible.

The most hopeful scenario: businesses that filed timely protests and are first in line could see refunds beginning 6 to 12 months after CBP sets up an official refund process. More realistically, importers should expect 12 to 24 months before actual payments begin flowing. That estimate accounts for the litigation volume, the uncertainty over whether CBP will act on its own or wait to be compelled, and the federal budget process. Those pursuing litigation or tangled in supply-chain disputes could wait three or four years.

President Trump, at a press conference on February 20, 2026, criticized the Court for not addressing refunds and speculated that “we will end up being in court for five years” to resolve the issue. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the refund question is “in dispute” and “could be dragged out for weeks, months, years.” These are not the statements of an administration planning to move quickly.

What Importers Need to Do Right Now: A Practical Checklist

If you paid IEEPA tariffs between February 4, 2025 and February 20, 2026, here is what needs to happen, in order.

First: identify which tariffs you paid. Review your CBP entry records and determine which entries were subject to IEEPA tariffs, meaning the reciprocal tariffs, or tariffs imposed under IEEPA using drug trafficking or oil trade as the stated justification. Your customs broker can identify these through the ACE system. Tariffs imposed under Section 232 (tariffs based on national security grounds) or Section 301 (tariffs targeting unfair Chinese trade practices) are separate authorities, still in effect, and not refundable under this ruling.

Second: gather your documentation. Official customs entry summaries (CBP Form 7501), the documents that record what you imported and what you paid, commercial invoices, packing lists, and proof of payment for each entry. Organize them by entry date and liquidation date. If you are not already enrolled in ACE, create an account and download your entry records immediately.

Third: determine liquidation status. For each entry, find out whether CBP has finalized the tariff amount. You can check this in ACE or through your customs broker. Entries must liquidate within one year of entry by statute (with possible extensions up to four years), but often liquidate earlier, so your protest deadline may be sooner than you assume.

Fourth: calculate your protest deadlines. The 90-day clock runs from each entry’s liquidation date. If the deadline has not passed, you can file a protest directly with CBP. If it has passed, your path runs through the Court of International Trade, with a two-year deadline to file suit, starting from the date the tariffs were assessed.

Fifth: file. For entries within the 90-day protest window, file CBP Form 19 (or the electronic equivalent via ACE) requesting a refund of IEEPA duties plus interest. For entries not yet liquidated, file a Post-Summary Correction requesting removal of the IEEPA tariff before liquidation. As of February 6, 2026, CBP issues all refunds via ACH electronic transfer rather than paper checks, so make sure your ACE account has current banking information on file.

Sixth: if you missed the 90-day protest deadline, consult a customs attorney about filing in the CIT under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i), keeping in mind that § 1581(i) applies only when other CIT jurisdictional provisions are unavailable and does not provide a standalone cause of action. The two-year window provides some breathing room, but the sooner you file, the sooner you preserve your claim.

Seventh: review your supply chain contracts. If you received tariff surcharges from suppliers, or passed them on to customers, your contracts determine refund allocation obligations. CBP will not sort this out for you.

The Administration’s Response: New Tariff Authorities and Litigation Risk

The Supreme Court’s ruling is final on the constitutional question. But the Trump administration is not simply accepting the result and moving on.

Within hours of the ruling, President Trump announced a 10% global tariff under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, a different statute that allows temporary tariffs up to 15% for up to 150 days. Whether the administration can chain together back-to-back 150-day periods to effectively make the tariffs permanent is legally untested. The administration is also expected to lean on Section 232 (national security grounds) and Section 301 (unfair trade practices) to maintain duties on specific countries and product categories. Our earlier coverage of the major questions doctrine explains why the Court’s reasoning may not extend to those alternative authorities.

Justice Kavanaugh’s dissent, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, is worth reading not because it changes the outcome but because it is a guide for future litigation. Kavanaugh argues that this legal principle has never been used to limit a law dealing with foreign policy. He also argues that “regulate importation” in IEEPA logically includes tariffs. His reasoning is that quotas and embargoes, both explicitly authorized, are functionally similar economic tools. If a future Court majority finds that argument convincing in a foreign affairs or national security context, the current ruling would apply to fewer situations than it does today.

For importers, the refund battle and the tariff battle are running simultaneously. Even as businesses pursue refunds for duties the Court invalidated, new tariffs under different legal authorities are already taking effect. The trade policy environment is not stabilizing, it is shifting to a different legal terrain.

The refund process will be slow, disputed, and in some cases hopeless for businesses that missed administrative deadlines through no fault of their own. The government collected money it had no legal authority to collect. The system for returning it was built for routine disputes, not a constitutional ruling covering 34 million individual shipments recorded in the customs system. That gap between what the law says and what the process can deliver is where a lot of businesses are going to get lost. The ones who act now, before more deadlines pass, are the ones with the best chance of seeing their money again.

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