The US Tariff Refund Goes to One Name. Is It Yours?

Some of the US tariffs you paid are coming back. The question is who they're coming back to.

• Which tariffs come back, and which don't?

  Only one set is being refunded: the IEEPA tariffs collected up to February 24, 2026. On Canadian goods, they started March 4, 2025. Steel, aluminum, autos, lumber and the tariffs added since February 2026, including the 50 per cent duty on some Canadian goods (in force since August 19, 2026, and widened to more goods on August 22), are not being refunded.^[3][4][5]

• Why refund one tariff while charging another?

  In February 2026, the US Supreme Court ruled that the emergency law behind them never allowed tariffs, so the money must be returned. The administration then imposed new tariffs under different laws, and those stay in force unless a court strikes them down too. You get back the unlawful ones while paying the ones still standing.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is paying them back with interest: about US$126 billion approved by early October.^[1]

The catch is one line of paperwork. The refund goes only to the business named on each US customs entry. Many Canadian exporters carried the cost without being that name.

What you will learn

How to check whether the refund is yours, and what it does to your books.

Two checks before anything else

Where the real decisions sit

Filing is paperwork. The harder questions are financial: where the money lands, who really paid, and how it hits your books. That is where Bibeka works with owners.

If you were the importer: give the money somewhere to land

You can claim, usually through your broker, but each entry's age matters. Recent entries go through CBP's online system. The oldest, from early 2025, may need a protest or court filing, which is a lawyer's question.^[1]

CBP pays refunds only by electronic transfer to a US-dollar account at a US bank. A Canadian account, even a US-dollar one, doesn't qualify.^[3]

Some refunds have already been rejected or returned because no qualifying US account was on file. An approved refund that can't be paid is still cash you don't have.^[8]

The money can go to the importer's own US account, or to a third party it formally names, such as its broker. Either way, it must trace back to the importer's claim, or your books stop matching. Bibeka can walk you through the options and what to ask your bank.

If your customer was the importer: count what you absorbed

You can't claim from CBP. But through 2025, many exporters cut prices or offered discounts to keep US accounts.^[3]

Picture a hypothetical Ontario parts maker whose US distributor was the importer of record. It cut its price to keep the account, so it carried part of the duty on every invoice. Now the refund, with interest, goes to the distributor.

Can you ask for some of it back? You can always ask. Whether you can insist depends on what is on paper.

Your footing is strongest if your contract has a clause on tariff changes, such as a price adjustment or cost-sharing term. A written price notice that tied your discount to the tariff also helps. A general price cut, with nothing linking it to the tariff, is much weaker. There is little court guidance yet.^[9][10]

For tens of thousands of dollars, a cross-border lawsuit against your own customer can cost more than it recovers, and lose you the account. The practical path is usually a polite, written request backed by a clear number. Working out that number, invoice by invoice, is accounting work. Whether your contract gives you more than a request is a question for your lawyer.

Either way: the money changes your books

If you were the importer, the tariff was part of what your goods cost. The refund reverses it: it lowers inventory for goods still on hand, or cost of sales for goods already sold. The interest is recorded separately as other income. The deposit may also be smaller than the claim, because CBP can deduct other amounts owed.^[11][12][1]

If your customer was the importer, the tariff never touched your cost of goods. It showed up as lower sales. Anything your customer pays back generally adjusts revenue or other income, not cost of sales.

Under the rules most Canadian private companies follow, neither is booked until confirmed. It then lands in that year's results, not last year's.^[13]

Get this wrong and your margins mislead you, along with the pricing, bank covenants and sale value built on them. The Canadian tax side deserves its own look; that's our next article.

Who to call for what

Find the name, then follow the money

The owners who come out ahead will be the ones who knew whose name was on the paperwork, and what it meant for their numbers.

Three questions to sit with:

1. On every US shipment since early 2025, whose name was the importer of record?
2. If it wasn't yours, how much of the tariff did you absorb through price?
3. When a refund arrives, which line of your books does it reverse, and in which year?

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