US Customs and Border Protection will switch on Entry Type 13, a new electronic informal entry for international mail, in the production environment of the Automated Commercial Environment on September 22, 2026. The test applies to postal shipments valued at $2,500 or less, including the parcels that once moved duty free under the $800 de minimis threshold. Participation is voluntary at launch, but the process it replaces is already gone.
The change is procedural on its face and structural underneath. It converts a monthly spreadsheet exercise, historically handled by foreign postal operators at a flat duty rate, into a line-level customs filing that demands tariff classification, a bond, and a party with legal standing to make entry. For cross-border e-commerce, that is the point at which the end of de minimis stops being a duty rate and starts being a compliance obligation.
In short
- Entry Type 13 goes live September 22, 2026 in the ACE production environment, covering international mail shipments valued at $2,500 or less.
- Only owners, purchasers, and licensed customs brokers may file. Nonbroker “qualified third parties”, including foreign postal operators, lost eligibility under the interim process.
- A customs bond is now a precondition of release. Filers need a basic importation and entry bond, single transaction or continuous, recorded in ACE eBond.
- October 22, 2026 is the harder deadline. That is when exclusions bite: Chapter 98 and 99 goods, free trade agreement claims, PGA-regulated items, AD/CVD merchandise, quota goods, alcohol, and tobacco.
- The flat 10% shortcut is finished. Every dutiable postal item now needs a 10-digit HTSUS classification, a country of origin, and a calculated duty figure.
What actually changes on September 22
Entry Type 13 is a new entry type inside ACE built specifically for US Postal Service international mail shipment data. CBP deployed it to the certification environment on July 24, 2026, and moves it to production on September 22, 2026. The Federal Register notice authorizing the test was published on June 24, 2026.
The test runs until CBP concludes it by a further Federal Register announcement, with no fixed end date. Comments are accepted throughout the test period by email to the agency’s de minimis mailbox. That open-ended structure signals CBP expects to iterate on the mechanics rather than lock them at launch.
Entry Type 13 allows importers or their brokers to transmit shipment-level data electronically: HTSUS classification, country of origin, declared value, duty calculation, and bond information. International mail carriers can transmit USPS tracking numbers as part of manifest filings. The design intent is a fully electronic future state for low-value mail, replacing manual and email-based handling.
Voluntary now, load-bearing later
Nothing compels a filer to use Entry Type 13 on September 22. The interim postal informal entry process, effective July 24, 2026, continues to operate alongside it. The practical incentive is that the interim process is an email-and-spreadsheet workflow that does not scale.
Filers who stay on the interim track submit an Excel or CSV file by email each month. Filers who move to Entry Type 13 transmit through electronic data interchange into ACE. For any seller shipping more than a trivial number of parcels, the second option is the only one that survives contact with volume.
Why CBP needed a new entry type at all
The old postal regime was built for a world in which nobody looked closely at low-value mail. Foreign postal operators submitted monthly spreadsheets applying a flat 10% ad valorem duty rate, with no requirement to provide a Harmonized Tariff Schedule classification. That arrangement was administratively cheap and analytically blind.
It also handled a volume nobody designed it for. CBP has reported processing more than 1.36 billion de minimis shipments in 2024. A flat rate applied by a foreign postal administration on an aggregated spreadsheet is not a customs process in any meaningful sense; it is a remittance.
What the flat 10% concealed
A single blended rate erases the information customs enforcement depends on. Without HTSUS classification, CBP cannot identify goods subject to antidumping duties, quota restrictions, or partner government agency requirements. Without a country of origin at line level, it cannot apply Section 232 or Section 301 rates that vary sharply by product and source.
The flat rate also produced systematic mispricing in both directions. Apparel carrying Column 1 rates well above 10% was undertaxed, while low-duty categories were overtaxed. The move to line-level classification corrects that, and in doing so raises the effective rate on exactly the product mix that dominates cross-border parcel flows.
The enforcement gap that flat rates created
Customs enforcement depends on knowing what is in the box before deciding whether to open it. Targeting systems score shipments on classification, origin, value, shipper history, and consignee patterns. A monthly aggregate remittance supplies almost none of those signals.
That blind spot had consequences beyond revenue. Counterfeit goods, products made with forced labor, and merchandise subject to unpaid antidumping duties all moved more easily through a channel with no line-level visibility. The parcel channel became the path of least resistance precisely because it generated the least data.
Volume made the problem structural rather than marginal. When a channel handles over a billion shipments a year, even a very low defect rate produces a large absolute number of non-compliant entries. Manual review cannot scale to that denominator, so the response has to be data collected at entry.
This is the same information gap CBP has been attacking on the commercial side. The agency’s recent proposal on heightened import disclosures for supply chain visibility asks for materially more data about who made a good and where. Entry Type 13 is the postal-channel companion to that push.
Who can file, and who just lost the right
The eligibility change is the most consequential provision and the least discussed. Under the interim process, nonbroker “qualified third parties”, explicitly including foreign postal operators, could submit filings. Under the current rules they cannot.
Filing is now restricted to owners, purchasers, or licensed customs brokers acting under 19 C.F.R. 143.26(a). That is the standard right-to-make-entry test applied to commercial imports, imported wholesale into the mail channel. A foreign seller with no US entity and no broker relationship has no path to file.
The broker bottleneck
This creates a capacity question the launch date does not answer. The licensed customs broker population was sized for a commercial entry universe, not for a mail channel that recently processed over a billion shipments a year. Brokers must now underwrite, onboard, and bond a long tail of small foreign sellers.
Broker economics work against the smallest shippers. Per-entry fees that are trivial against a container are punitive against a $40 parcel, even under a consolidated monthly filing. The likely outcome is consolidation: sellers route through marketplaces or fulfillment partners that already hold broker relationships and continuous bonds.
Identity and standing checks are tightening in parallel. CBP has been voiding importer of record numbers that fail validation, which removes the shell-entity workaround some cross-border sellers relied on to establish nominal US standing.
What the filing requires
The data burden is the difference between a remittance and an entry. The interim postal process requires a defined field set submitted monthly, and Entry Type 13 carries the same substance into EDI transmission.
| Element | Interim postal process (from July 24, 2026) | Prior flat-rate regime |
|---|---|---|
| Filer code | Required | Not required |
| Bond number | Required | Not required |
| Merchandise description | Required | Minimal |
| Country of origin | Required | Not required at line level |
| HTSUS classification | Required, 10-digit | Not required |
| Declared value | Required | Aggregated |
| Duty rate and total duty owed | Calculated by filer | Flat 10% ad valorem |
| Carrier and tracking number | Required | Not required |
| Port and arrival date | Required | Not required |
| Eligible filers | Owner, purchaser, licensed broker | Qualified third parties, including foreign posts |
The 10-digit HTSUS requirement is the expensive line in that table. Classification is a judgment call that carries penalty exposure when wrong, and it cannot be automated reliably across an unstructured catalog of consumer goods. Sellers with tens of thousands of SKUs face a classification project, not a data-mapping exercise.
Valuation is the second exposure. Declared values on cross-border parcels have historically been loose, because nothing turned on them below $800. Now every declared value is a duty base that CBP can test.
How the interim process works in practice
Between July 24, 2026 and the Entry Type 13 launch, postal informal entries run on a manual workflow. Filers assemble a spreadsheet covering every shipment that arrived in a given month and submit it by email to CBP. The file must carry the full field set, one row per shipment.
That design has an obvious ceiling. A seller moving a few hundred parcels a month can maintain a spreadsheet; a seller moving fifty thousand cannot, at least not without building the same data pipeline Entry Type 13 expects anyway. The interim process was intended as a bridge, not a destination.
Reconciliation risk in a monthly cycle
Monthly batching introduces a timing mismatch that per-shipment processes avoid. Merchandise is released before duty is calculated and paid, which means CBP extends credit against a bond rather than collecting at the border. That is why the bond requirement is non-negotiable.
It also means errors surface weeks after the goods have shipped and, frequently, after the customer has been billed. A misclassification discovered in the monthly filing cannot be passed to a consumer who completed checkout in the prior month. The duty variance lands on the seller’s margin.
Sellers accustomed to delivered duty paid pricing face the sharpest version of this. Quoting a landed cost at checkout requires knowing the duty rate at the moment of sale, which requires classification to be resolved upstream in the catalog rather than downstream in a monthly reconciliation.
Bonds and the monthly payment cycle
A basic importation and entry bond is required before anything moves. Filers need either a single transaction bond or a continuous bond under Activity Code 1, filed in ACE eBond. Shipments are not released until CBP has the bond on file.
Continuous bonds are the practical choice for anyone shipping regularly, and they require a surety underwriting decision. Sureties price on duty exposure, and duty exposure on cross-border parcel flows just went from near zero to the full Column 1 rate plus applicable trade remedies. Some small foreign sellers will simply fail underwriting.
Payment runs monthly rather than per shipment. Filers submit an International Mail Duty Worksheet and pay by ACH debit through Pay.gov, due by the seventh day of the month following the parcel’s arrival. Missing that date is not a soft failure.
CBP’s stated remedies for late payment include interest charges, offsetting future refunds, and suspending merchandise release privileges under 19 C.F.R. 142.26. The refund-offset provision has more force than usual right now, given how many importers are waiting on tariff refunds. CBP’s decision to postpone CAPE Phase 3, stalling billions in tariff refunds, shows how long those balances can sit.
The October 22 exclusions are the real deadline
September 22 opens a voluntary test. October 22, 2026 is when CBP enforces exclusions that push whole categories of merchandise out of the postal informal process entirely.
| Excluded category | Why it is carved out | Alternative path |
|---|---|---|
| Chapter 98 merchandise | Special classification provisions such as US goods returned | Formal or other informal entry |
| Chapter 99 merchandise | Temporary rate modifications and trade remedy provisions | Formal entry |
| Free trade agreement claims | Preference claims need origin certification | Formal entry |
| Partner government agency goods | FDA, CPSC, USDA and similar data requirements | Entry with PGA message set |
| AD/CVD merchandise | Antidumping and countervailing duty case coverage | Formal entry with case numbers |
| Quota merchandise | Quantitative restrictions need quota processing | Formal entry |
| Alcohol | Excise tax and permit requirements | Restricted, often prohibited by mail |
| Tobacco | Excise tax and permit requirements | Restricted, often prohibited by mail |
The partner government agency exclusion has the widest reach in consumer e-commerce. Cosmetics, dietary supplements, children’s products, electronics with radio emitters, and food contact articles all carry PGA data requirements. A meaningful share of what moves through cross-border marketplaces sits in one of those buckets.
Sellers who assumed the mail channel was a general-purpose route should read that table as a routing decision. After October 22, the affected goods need a different entry type, a different data set, and in several cases a different transport mode.
What it asks of carriers and USPS
The postal operator’s role narrows sharply under the new framework. Foreign posts lost the ability to file on behalf of shippers, which removes them from the customs relationship they occupied for years. They remain in the transport chain but not in the entry chain.
USPS sits in a different position as the receiving operator. International mail carriers can transmit USPS tracking numbers as part of manifest filings, which is how CBP ties an electronic entry to a physical parcel. That linkage is the operational hinge of the whole design.
Where the linkage fails, parcels stop. A shipment with no matched entry has no bond behind it and no duty calculation, which leaves CBP with no basis to release it. The predictable early-stage friction is not enforcement action but held mail.
Carriers outside the postal network already operate under the separate suspension covering all non-postal modes, published in the companion Federal Register notice on June 24, 2026. Express carriers have long filed electronically and hold their own broker capability, which is why the commercial channel absorbed the change with less disruption than the mail channel is likely to see.
How the Supreme Court ruling reshaped the rate basis
The duty framework layered onto postal shipments was originally built on rates derived from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. That foundation moved in February 2026. The Supreme Court held on February 20, 2026, in a 6-3 decision, that IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs, invalidating both the reciprocal tariffs and the trafficking and immigration tariffs.
The de minimis termination itself survived. Reporting on the decision has been consistent that the suspension of duty-free de minimis treatment, along with tariffs imposed under Section 232 and Section 301, remains in effect. The mail channel therefore lost its exemption without retaining the IEEPA rate structure that was supposed to price it.
What replaced the IEEPA rates
The administration responded with a 10% global tariff asserted under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. The Court of International Trade ruled on May 7, 2026 that the Section 122 proclamation was ultra vires, on the basis that it identified trade and current account deficits rather than the balance-of-payments deficits Section 122 contemplates. That leaves Section 232 and Section 301 carrying the load.
Section 232 coverage now spans steel and aluminum and their derivatives, autos and parts, trucks, copper, lumber, and semiconductors, with further investigations opened or expanded. Section 301 investigations reportedly span roughly 76 countries. Both are product-specific and origin-specific, which is precisely why a flat postal rate no longer functions.
Why this makes classification unavoidable
A blended rate can approximate a broad-based tariff. It cannot approximate a patchwork of product-level remedies that vary by HTSUS subheading and country of origin. Once IEEPA fell and Section 232 and 301 became the operative authorities, CBP had no way to assess postal mail correctly without line-level classification.
Read that way, Entry Type 13 is less a policy choice than an arithmetic consequence. The rate structure the courts left standing requires data the postal channel was never built to produce.
What it means for marketplaces and cross-border sellers
The commercial effect of de minimis suspension is already measurable, and it is large. The Universal Postal Union has reported that the volume of sub-$800 parcels entering the US fell by 54% after the suspension took effect, driven by sellers exiting the market, restructured fulfillment, and suspended postal routes.
The Chinese platform response
Shein and Temu together accounted for roughly 600,000 daily shipments before the suspension, according to industry estimates. Both have restructured toward US-based inventory and local fulfillment rather than absorbing per-parcel duty on direct-from-China shipping. That shift was underway before Entry Type 13 and is accelerated by it.
The same pressure is visible in Europe, where a parallel fee regime is pushing the same platforms toward local stock. The EU handling fee on small parcels arriving before November 1 creates a second, independent reason to localize inventory rather than ship cross-border at the item level.
Volume contraction of that magnitude changes the economics of the channel itself. Postal networks price on density, and a 54% drop in parcel flow raises unit handling costs for whatever remains. Route suspensions reported during the transition compounded that effect.
The small-seller tail
Large platforms can absorb classification and bonding as fixed costs spread across enormous volume. Independent sellers on eBay, Etsy, and Shopify storefronts cannot. For them the binding constraint is not the duty rate but the requirement to have a broker, a bond, and a defensible HTSUS code for every item.
The predictable result is disintermediation running the other way. Sellers who previously shipped direct will move inventory into US warehouses in bulk, paying duty once on a consolidated commercial entry rather than per parcel. That favors third-party logistics providers and marketplace fulfillment programs over independent cross-border shipping.
Where the compliance cost actually lands
The headline framing of de minimis repeal is duty collection, but the recurring cost for a small seller is administrative. Classification work is front-loaded and then perpetual, because catalogs change. Bond premiums, broker fees, and monthly filing labor recur regardless of whether any given month is profitable.
Those costs are close to fixed per seller rather than per parcel. That is the mechanism by which the rule concentrates the market: it imposes a threshold scale below which cross-border direct shipping stops being viable at any margin. Sellers below that threshold exit the channel or move behind an intermediary.
Marketplaces are the obvious intermediary, and they have an incentive to accept the role. Taking on importer of record responsibility gives a platform control over landed cost, and therefore over the checkout experience that determines conversion. It also deepens seller dependency on the platform.
How the US timeline compares internationally
The US is not alone in dismantling low-value import exemptions, but the sequencing and severity differ. Three regimes are converging on the same destination from different starting points.
| Regime | Old threshold | Current status | Key date ahead |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $800 (Section 321) | Suspended for all countries; postal informal entry live | Oct 22, 2026 exclusions; Jul 1, 2027 statutory repeal |
| European Union | EUR 150 | Threshold removal with interim flat per-item duty | Handling fee regime, November 1, 2026 |
| Brazil | $50 exemption | Temporary relief measure lapsing | September 8, 2026 expiry, 20% federal duty returns |
Brazil offers the nearest-term comparison. Its $50 parcel exemption sits inside a temporary measure, and the taxa das blusinhas relief expires on September 8, restoring a 20% federal import duty on low-value parcels. Sellers running a single global cross-border operation face three separate compliance regimes inside eight weeks.
The EU approach differs in an instructive way. Rather than requiring full classification on every low-value parcel immediately, the interim design applies a flat per-item charge, which preserves administrative simplicity at the cost of precision. The US has taken the opposite trade, choosing precision and pushing the administrative burden onto filers.
Each choice creates a different failure mode. A flat per-item charge is regressive against cheap goods and leaves the enforcement blind spot partly intact. Line-level classification closes the blind spot but requires a compliance apparatus that small foreign sellers do not have.
The direction of travel is uniform even where the mechanics diverge. Every major consumer market is moving from value-based exemption to item-level assessment, and each is building the data infrastructure to enforce it.
What to watch between now and July 2027
The September 22 launch is an interim step toward a statutory endpoint. Congress repealed Section 321 de minimis treatment for all commercial shipments effective July 1, 2027. At that point the exemption ends by statute rather than by executive suspension, which removes the litigation risk that has clouded every tariff action since February.
Three variables will determine how disruptive the transition is. The first is broker capacity: whether the licensed broker population can onboard the long tail of small foreign sellers, or whether a compliance bottleneck forms at the October 22 exclusion date.
The second is uptake. CBP made Entry Type 13 voluntary, which means the agency will learn from participants who self-select into it. Low uptake before October 22 would leave a large volume of merchandise moving through an interim email process that was never intended to carry it.
The third is the rate basis itself. With IEEPA struck down and the Section 122 proclamation invalidated at the Court of International Trade, further litigation or new Section 232 and 301 actions could shift postal duty rates again. Filers now calculate their own duty, which means rate instability transfers directly into filing risk.
A fourth variable sits underneath all three: data quality from foreign sellers. A US importer of record is legally responsible for a classification and value it usually receives from an overseas supplier. Where that upstream data is wrong, liability still attaches domestically.
For merchants, the near-term checklist is unglamorous and specific. Confirm right-to-make-entry standing, secure a continuous bond in ACE eBond, classify the catalog to 10 digits, map SKUs against the October 22 exclusion list, and establish a Pay.gov payment routine that clears by the seventh of each month.
Frequently asked questions
What is Entry Type 13?
Entry Type 13 is a new electronic informal entry type in CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment, created for international mail shipments valued at $2,500 or less. It lets importers or licensed brokers transmit shipment-level data electronically, including HTSUS classification, origin, value, duty calculation, and bond information.
When does the Entry Type 13 test start?
The test commences on September 22, 2026, when Entry Type 13 deploys to the ACE production environment. It had already deployed to the ACE certification environment on July 24, 2026. The test continues until CBP concludes it through a Federal Register announcement.
Is participation mandatory?
No. Entry Type 13 is a voluntary test at launch, and the interim postal informal entry process remains available. The practical pressure comes from volume, because the interim process relies on monthly email submission of Excel or CSV files.
Who is allowed to file?
Only owners, purchasers, or licensed customs brokers with the right to make entry under 19 C.F.R. 143.26(a). Nonbroker “qualified third parties”, including foreign postal operators that filed under the earlier interim arrangement, are no longer eligible.
What happened to the flat 10% postal duty rate?
It is gone. Foreign postal operators previously submitted monthly spreadsheets applying a flat 10% ad valorem rate without HTSUS classification. Filers now provide a 10-digit HTSUS classification, country of origin, declared value, and a calculated duty figure for each shipment.
What bond is required?
A basic importation and entry bond, either a single transaction bond or a continuous bond under Activity Code 1, filed in ACE eBond. CBP will not release shipments until the bond is on file, so bonding is a precondition rather than a follow-up step.
How and when are duties paid?
Duties are paid monthly rather than per shipment. Filers submit an International Mail Duty Worksheet and pay by ACH debit through Pay.gov, due by the seventh day of the month following the shipment’s arrival. Late payment can trigger interest, refund offsets, or suspension of release privileges under 19 C.F.R. 142.26.
What is excluded from the postal process after October 22, 2026?
Merchandise claiming Chapter 98 or Chapter 99 treatment, free trade agreement preference claims, partner government agency regulated goods, antidumping and countervailing duty merchandise, quota goods, alcohol, and tobacco. Those categories must move through formal entry or another appropriate process.
Does de minimis come back?
No. Congress repealed Section 321 de minimis treatment for all commercial shipments effective July 1, 2027, which converts the current executive suspension into a statutory termination. The February 2026 Supreme Court ruling on IEEPA invalidated certain tariffs but did not restore duty-free de minimis treatment.