The U.S. Customs Service is preparing a system within 45 days to process President Donald Trump’s tax returns that were canceled as illegal, a customs official said in his filing Friday.
The announcement by Customs and Border Protection officer Brandon Lord came shortly before federal lawyers met with a federal trade judge to try to craft a comprehensive settlement process to recover $166 billion in tax payments to nearly 330,000 importers.
Last month, the US Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the tariffs that were a key part of Trump’s economic policy. The court did not say how the duty collected should be refunded, leaving small importers concerned the process would be costly and time-consuming.
“This new process will require less submissions from importers,” Lord said in his statement, which he submitted to the US International Trade Court as attorneys for the government began to meet with Judge Richard Eaton from the courtroom.
Eaton called the meeting to discuss how the administration will implement its detailed order, issued Wednesday, directing CBP to begin refunding duties on potentially hundreds of thousands of importers using the agency’s existing internal process.
On Friday, after concluding a meeting with government attorneys, he said in a court filing that he was amending the order to no longer require “expedited compliance” and appeared to give CBP time to implement the new system. Eaton said he changed his order after considering “Brandon Lord’s statement”.
