US Customs and Border Protection will switch on Entry Type 13, its first purpose-built electronic entry type for international mail, in the production environment of the Automated Commercial Environment on September 22, 2026. The deployment is the operational half of a rule change that has already rewritten how every letter-post and parcel-post shipment entering the United States is declared, classified, bonded and paid for.
The regulatory half landed earlier. CBP published two notices on June 24, 2026: one making the suspension of the $800 de minimis administrative exemption indefinite for non-postal modes, and a companion notice covering mail shipments and establishing a new postal informal entry process. That postal process became mandatory on July 24, 2026 for qualifying mailed goods valued at $2,500 or less.
September 22 does not change what is owed. It changes how it is filed. Until now, the mail channel has run on a monthly spreadsheet emailed to a CBP inbox, with duty paid through Pay.gov. Entry Type 13 moves that traffic into ACE, the same system that handles commercial cargo, with shipment-level data and full customs bond coverage.
A second date matters just as much for sellers. On October 22, 2026, CBP begins enforcing a set of exclusions that push whole categories of merchandise out of the simplified postal process entirely. Goods claiming preferential treatment under a free trade agreement, goods classified under Chapter 98 or Chapter 99 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, and merchandise subject to partner government agency requirements will all need a different entry path.
In short
- Entry Type 13 goes live in ACE production on September 22, 2026, giving international mail shipments a dedicated electronic informal entry type for the first time.
- The postal informal entry process has been mandatory since July 24, 2026 for eligible mailed merchandise valued at $2,500 or less, per CBP guidance summarized by multiple trade law firms.
- Foreign postal operators are no longer eligible filers. Only the owner, the purchaser, or a licensed customs broker they designate may act as importer of record.
- October 22, 2026 closes the transition window for free trade agreement claims, Chapter 98 and 99 goods, and partner government agency merchandise, all of which are excluded from the simplified mail process.
- De minimis is not coming back. The exemption was suspended by executive order in August 2025, made indefinite by regulation in June 2026, and is scheduled for statutory repeal on July 1, 2027.
What CBP is actually switching on in September
Entry Type 13 is a new entry type code inside ACE, created specifically so that mail shipments can be filed electronically rather than through spreadsheets and email. According to a CBP Cargo Systems Messaging Service bulletin summarized by customs brokerage GHY International, the type deployed to the ACE certification environment on July 24, 2026 and reaches the production environment on September 22, 2026.
CBP has framed the September deployment as a voluntary test rather than a hard cutover. The test is scheduled to commence on September 22 and continue indefinitely, which in practice means the electronic option becomes available on that date and the legacy manual route continues alongside it.
That framing has caused some confusion in the broker community. The obligation to file a mail entry is not new on September 22. It has existed since July 24. What is new is a supported electronic channel for doing it.
What the entry type covers
Entry Type 13 applies to merchandise arriving through the international postal network and valued at $2,500 or less, the informal entry ceiling set out in 19 C.F.R. 143.21. Goods must be classifiable in Chapters 1 through 97 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States.
Filers submit shipment-level data: filer code, bond number, merchandise description, country of origin, the 10-digit HTSUS classification, declared value, applicable duty rate, total duty owed, carrier, tracking number, port of arrival and arrival date. That is a materially heavier data set than the postal channel has ever carried.
Anything above the $2,500 threshold, and anything in the excluded categories, must be entered under a different process, typically formal entry. The trade court decision that upheld the underlying repeal, which we covered when the $800 parcel loophole stayed shut, removed the last realistic legal route back to duty-free treatment for these shipments.
Why the electronic move is the real story
The manual process was never designed to carry volume. Filers compile an International Mail Duty Worksheet as an Excel or CSV file, email it to a CBP mailbox, and pay by ACH debit through the Pay.gov “International Mail Duties” form. Both the worksheet and the payment are due by the seventh day of the month following the month of arrival.
A monthly spreadsheet is workable for a handful of shipments. It is not workable for a mid-size cross-border seller moving thousands of parcels a week. Entry Type 13 is CBP’s answer to that scaling problem, and it is also the agency’s mechanism for getting shipment-level visibility it never had under de minimis.
How the mail channel arrived at this point
For most of the last decade, the de minimis provision at Section 321 of the Tariff Act let goods valued at $800 or less enter the United States free of duty and with minimal data. It was designed for travelers’ gifts and small samples. It became the plumbing of global direct-to-consumer e-commerce.
The volume tells the story. CBP data cited across trade press shows de minimis shipments rising from roughly 134 million in 2015 to more than 1.36 billion in fiscal 2024, with the agency putting the estimated value of that fiscal 2024 traffic at about $64.6 billion. By 2024, de minimis entries accounted for the overwhelming majority of all cargo entries into the country.
That is roughly 4 million parcels a day. Chinese-founded marketplaces Shein and Temu alone were estimated to account for around 600,000 daily shipments at the peak of the channel.
The three-stage rollback
The unwinding happened in stages. China and Hong Kong lost the exemption first, in May 2025. Executive Order 14324, signed in July 2025, suspended duty-free de minimis treatment for all countries with effect from August 29, 2025.
The June 24, 2026 rulemaking then converted what had been an emergency-powers suspension into an ordinary regulatory one, which matters a great deal for its durability. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act supplies the final step: statutory repeal of the exemption on July 1, 2027.
We wrote about the practical consumer effect when the United States closed the last parcel loophole on July 24. The September and October dates are the compliance machinery being bolted on behind that decision.
The interim workarounds that have already expired
CBP ran two temporary bridges while it built the permanent process, and both are now gone. The first let so-called qualified third parties, including foreign postal operators, file monthly spreadsheets applying a flat 10% ad valorem duty without providing any HTSUS classification at all. CBP certified a small group of companies, reported at 12, to collect duties on international mail under that arrangement.
The second bridge was a specific-duty option that let filers pay a flat per-item amount keyed to the origin country’s effective tariff rate: $80 per item for countries under 16%, $160 for countries in the 16–25% band, and $200 for countries above 25%. That option was available for six months only and expired on February 28, 2026.
Since that expiry, all mail shipments must be valued and duty must be calculated ad valorem, on declared value at the rate corresponding to the specific 10-digit HTSUS code. The flat-rate era in the postal channel is over.
Who is allowed to file a mail entry now
This is the change with the sharpest commercial edge, and it is the one most sellers have underestimated. Under the new process, eligible filers are limited to parties meeting the standards in 19 C.F.R. 143.26(a): the owner or purchaser of the merchandise, or a customs broker holding a valid license and designated by the owner, purchaser or consignee.
Foreign postal operators are no longer eligible. The category of nonbroker qualified third parties that operated under the interim procedures has been eliminated. A consignee who is neither owner nor purchaser, which describes most freight forwarders, carriers and the United States Postal Service itself in this context, must use a licensed broker as importer of record.
The consequence is structural. A seller in Vietnam or Turkey who previously handed a parcel to their national post and let the postal operator handle the duty arrangement no longer has that option. They need a US-facing importer of record with a broker relationship.
That requirement also transfers legal liability. An importer of record is responsible for the accuracy of the classification and valuation on every entry, and for any penalty arising from an error. Sellers who never previously touched US customs law now carry that exposure directly, or must find a broker willing to carry it for them.
Brokers, for their part, have been selective. Acting as importer of record for an unfamiliar foreign seller on thousands of low-value parcels concentrates risk in a service line with thin per-entry margins, and several large brokerages have limited the arrangement to established clients.
The bond requirement most sellers missed
Under 19 C.F.R. 145.15, a basic importation and entry bond must be on file in ACE eBond before any filing is made. That is either a single transaction bond or a continuous bond under Activity Code 1, written per 19 C.F.R. 113.62, obtained from a Treasury-certified surety on CBP Form 301.
Bonds are not instant. Underwriting a continuous bond for a new importer typically takes days to weeks depending on the surety and the applicant’s financial documentation. Any seller planning to use Entry Type 13 from September 22 needed the bond in place well before that.
The penalty exposure for late payment
Late duty payment now carries consequences that did not exist in the postal channel before. Interest accrues under 19 C.F.R. 24.3a. CBP can set off unpaid amounts against future refunds under 19 C.F.R. 24.72. Most operationally severe, the agency can suspend merchandise release privileges under 19 C.F.R. 142.26.
Suspension of release privileges is the enforcement lever that matters. A filer who misses the seventh-of-the-month deadline repeatedly risks having their inbound flow stopped, which for a peak-season seller is an existential rather than a financial problem.
What a compliant mail entry now requires
The table below sets out the obligations that now attach to a mail shipment, against what the same shipment required before the de minimis suspension took effect.
| Requirement | Before August 2025 | From July 24, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Duty on goods under $800 | None under Section 321 | Full ad valorem duty at HTSUS rate |
| HTSUS classification | Not required | 10-digit code required per line |
| Importer of record | Effectively none | Owner, purchaser or licensed broker |
| Customs bond | Not required | Basic importation and entry bond in ACE eBond |
| Filing vehicle | Postal declaration only | IMDW spreadsheet, or Entry Type 13 from September 22 |
| Payment | Not applicable | ACH debit via Pay.gov by the 7th of the following month |
| Foreign post as filer | Standard practice | Not permitted |
| Value ceiling | $800 de minimis | $2,500 informal entry ceiling |
Read down the right-hand column and the shape of the change is clear. The postal channel has been converted from a low-data consumer route into something closely resembling commercial cargo entry, with a slightly higher value ceiling and a monthly payment cycle as the only meaningful concessions.
What October 22 takes off the table
CBP built a three-month grace period into the exclusions, and it expires on October 22, 2026. From that date, several categories of merchandise are excluded from the simplified postal entry process and must move to Entry Type 13 or formal entry instead.
The excluded categories, per guidance published by Forvis Mazars and by Troutman Pepper Locke, are merchandise for which duty-free treatment is claimed under Chapter 98 of the HTSUS, merchandise subject to duties under Chapter 98 or Chapter 99, merchandise for which duty-free treatment is claimed under a free trade agreement, and merchandise subject to partner government agency requirements.
Separately, and already in force, the postal process cannot be used for merchandise valued above $2,500, quota goods, goods subject to antidumping or countervailing duties, or alcohol and tobacco.
Why the free trade agreement exclusion stings
The FTA exclusion is the one with the widest reach and the least intuitive logic. A Canadian or Mexican seller shipping a USMCA-originating good by post currently has a preference claim available. From October 22, making that claim disqualifies the shipment from the simplified process.
The seller then faces a choice: forgo the preference and pay the most-favored-nation rate to stay in the simple channel, or claim the preference and take on a heavier entry type. For low-value goods where the duty saving is a few dollars, the compliance cost of the second option will usually exceed the benefit.
Partner government agency goods leave the channel
The PGA exclusion catches more consumer merchandise than sellers expect. Cosmetics, dietary supplements, food, certain electronics with radio-frequency emissions, children’s products subject to Consumer Product Safety Commission requirements and medical devices all carry PGA data obligations.
Those categories are heavily represented in direct-to-consumer cross-border flows. From October 22 they cannot ride the simplified mail process, which effectively pushes a meaningful slice of postal e-commerce into broker-filed entries.
How the postal channel now compares with the courier channel
For a decade, the strategic question for a cross-border seller was whether to ship by post or by express courier. Post was cheap, slow and lightly regulated. Courier was expensive, fast and fully manifested. The regulatory gap between them has now largely closed.
| Dimension | Postal channel (from July 2026) | Express courier channel |
|---|---|---|
| Duty-free threshold | None | None |
| Entry type | Postal informal, or Entry Type 13 | Informal or formal entry |
| Classification burden | 10-digit HTSUS per line | 10-digit HTSUS per line |
| Who files | Owner, purchaser or broker | Carrier acting as broker, or independent broker |
| Bond | Required, importer’s own | Usually carrier’s bond |
| Payment timing | Monthly, by the 7th | Per shipment or on account |
| Typical transit | Slower, variable | Faster, tracked end to end |
| Compliance handled by | Seller or their broker | Largely the carrier |
The practical read is that the postal channel keeps its freight-cost advantage but has lost its compliance-cost advantage. Couriers bundle brokerage into the price. Postal shipments now require the seller to source that capability separately.
That is a meaningful shift in the economics of direct-from-origin fulfillment, and it reinforces a trend we flagged when we examined how cross-border direct parcels give way to US domestic fulfillment. Bulk import into a US warehouse spreads the entry cost across a whole container rather than each parcel.
What this costs a cross-border seller
The duty itself is the visible cost, and it is now calculated on declared value at the rate for the specific HTSUS code, plus any origin-based additional duties that stack on top. For goods from China, that stacking can produce effective rates far above the base MFN rate.
The less visible costs are the ones reshaping seller behavior. Broker fees apply per entry. A continuous bond carries an annual premium. Classification work, whether internal or outsourced, is a recurring operating expense rather than a one-time setup.
There is also a working-capital effect that sellers routinely overlook. Duty is now payable monthly on arrivals, while marketplace payouts typically settle on their own cycle, so a fast-growing seller funds a widening gap between when duty falls due and when the corresponding revenue lands.
Per-parcel economics turn hostile below a price point
Fixed compliance costs are indifferent to order value. When a fixed cost of a few dollars per entry lands on a $12 order, it consumes the margin. When it lands on a $200 order, it is a rounding error.
That is why the sub-$25 direct-from-origin order, the format Shein and Temu industrialized, is the hardest hit. The business model assumed a zero-duty, zero-entry-cost channel that no longer exists in any mode.
Consolidation is the obvious response
Sellers with volume are consolidating: importing in bulk under a single formal entry, then fulfilling domestically. That converts a per-parcel compliance cost into a per-container one and restores the unit economics, at the price of holding US inventory and taking demand risk.
Marketplaces have been pushing sellers in this direction for the better part of a year, expanding US warehousing programs and adjusting fee structures to favor locally stocked inventory.
What the revenue and volume data shows so far
The policy has produced measurable revenue. CBP reported collecting more than $1 billion in duties on over 246 million low-cost shipments in the period after it began phasing out the exemption in May 2025, a figure the agency has used to argue the enforcement burden is justified by the return.
Set against the pre-suspension baseline, though, the collection rate implies an average of roughly $4 per shipment. That is a modest per-parcel figure, and it illustrates the core tension in the policy: the administrative cost of processing an entry is not obviously smaller than the duty it recovers on a genuinely low-value package.
Volume is the other half of the picture. The channel that carried 1.36 billion shipments in fiscal 2024 has been contracting since the August 2025 suspension, as sellers reroute to bulk import or exit. Fiscal 2026 mail and low-value entry counts will be the first clean read on how much of that traffic was structurally dependent on duty-free treatment.
Why CBP wanted shipment-level data
Revenue was never the only motivation. The de minimis channel gave CBP almost no visibility into what was arriving: no HTSUS code, no reliable valuation, frequently no meaningful description. That blind spot has been the agency’s stated concern in enforcement contexts ranging from counterfeit goods to controlled substances and forced-labor screening.
Entry Type 13 closes that gap by design. Requiring a 10-digit classification, a declared value and a bonded importer of record on every mail shipment converts an opaque flow into structured data that can be targeted, risk-scored and audited like any other cargo stream.
Who is most exposed to the September and October dates
Exposure is not evenly distributed. The heaviest concentration sits with sellers who ship direct from origin at low average order values, and with the foreign postal operators who used to intermediate that flow and can no longer file.
National posts outside the United States face the sharpest structural problem. Several suspended or restricted US-bound parcel services during the 2025 transition rather than absorb duty-collection obligations they were not built to carry, a pattern we tracked when assessing the risk of a second wave of US-bound postal restrictions.
The October 22 exclusions add a second, narrower shock aimed at categories rather than geographies. A supplements brand shipping from Europe and a toy seller shipping from Southeast Asia both lose the simplified route on the same day, for the same reason.
Smaller sellers face a capability gap
Large marketplaces have customs teams. A seller shipping 200 parcels a month does not, and now needs a broker relationship, a bond, an HTSUS classification set and a monthly filing discipline to keep selling into the United States by post.
Some will absorb that. Some will route through a marketplace’s importer-of-record program. Others will exit the US market, which is the outcome trade associations have warned about since the first suspension took effect.
What happens between September 22 and July 2027
Three threads run through the next ten months. The first is adoption: how quickly filers move from the IMDW spreadsheet to Entry Type 13, and whether CBP converts the voluntary test into a mandatory requirement.
The second is enforcement. The October 22 exclusions are the first real test of whether CBP polices category eligibility in the mail stream, or whether misclassified shipments simply flow through.
The third is litigation, which has been the wild card in US trade policy all year. The Supreme Court struck down IEEPA-based tariffs in February 2026, and refund proceedings continue at the Court of International Trade, where a class certification motion could open the refund process to a much wider set of importers. We covered that proceeding when the trade court weighed the IEEPA refund class.
Notably, the de minimis rescission has so far survived that litigation. The June 2026 regulatory action and the statutory repeal scheduled for July 1, 2027 give the policy two independent legal foundations that do not rest on emergency powers.
The July 1, 2027 backstop
Statutory repeal is the endpoint. Once de minimis is removed from the Tariff Act itself, no executive action or court ruling restores it, and the entry infrastructure being built now becomes permanent architecture rather than transitional plumbing.
Sellers treating the current regime as a temporary disruption to be waited out are misreading the timeline. CBP publishes current guidance for low-value and e-commerce shipments on its e-commerce FAQ page.
What to watch next
Watch the CSMS bulletins in the first two weeks after September 22 for deployment issues. New ACE entry types routinely ship with filing defects, and broker software vendors will need cycles to certify against the production environment.
Watch whether CBP extends the October 22 compliance date. Three-month transition windows in customs rulemaking are extended more often than not when the trade community demonstrates unreadiness, and broker associations have already flagged the FTA exclusion as operationally awkward.
Watch parcel volumes in the September and October trade data. The clearest signal of whether the postal channel is adapting or shrinking will be whether inbound mail volumes stabilize or continue the decline that began after August 2025.
Watch broker capacity as well. If the licensed broker community declines to serve the long tail of small foreign sellers at a workable price, the practical effect of the rule will be exclusion rather than compliance, regardless of what the regulation permits on paper.
Finally, watch the marketplaces. If Temu, Shein, AliExpress and eBay’s global shipping program push harder into US-domiciled inventory through the fourth quarter, that is the market confirming the direct-from-origin parcel model no longer clears its own compliance cost.
Frequently asked questions
What is Entry Type 13?
Entry Type 13 is a new entry type in CBP’s Automated Commercial Environment created specifically for electronic informal entry of international mail shipments. It deploys to the ACE production environment on September 22, 2026 as a voluntary test that continues indefinitely.
Does the September 22 date create a new obligation to file?
No. The obligation to file a mail entry has applied since July 24, 2026. September 22 adds an electronic filing option to a process that previously ran on monthly spreadsheets emailed to CBP.
What is the value limit for the postal informal entry process?
$2,500 or less, which is the informal entry ceiling under 19 C.F.R. 143.21. Goods must be classifiable in HTSUS Chapters 1 through 97. Shipments above that value require formal entry.
Can a foreign post still handle duty collection for me?
No. Foreign postal operators are no longer eligible filers under the new process, and the interim category of nonbroker qualified third parties has been eliminated. Filing is limited to the owner, the purchaser, or a designated licensed customs broker.
Do I need a customs bond for mail shipments?
Yes. A basic importation and entry bond must be on file in ACE eBond before any filing, as a single transaction bond or a continuous bond under Activity Code 1, obtained from a Treasury-certified surety on CBP Form 301.
What changes on October 22, 2026?
CBP begins enforcing exclusions that remove several categories from the simplified postal process: free trade agreement duty-free claims, Chapter 98 and Chapter 99 goods, and merchandise subject to partner government agency requirements. Those shipments need Entry Type 13 or formal entry.
Are the flat per-item duty rates still available?
No. The specific-duty option of $80, $160 or $200 per item, keyed to the origin country’s tariff band, was available for six months and expired on February 28, 2026. All mail shipments now use the ad valorem method on declared value.
When are mail duties due?
The International Mail Duty Worksheet and the corresponding payment are both due by the seventh day of the month following the month in which the packages arrived. Payment is made by ACH debit through the Pay.gov International Mail Duties form.
Could de minimis be restored?
It is unlikely. The exemption was suspended by executive order effective August 29, 2025, made indefinite by regulation on June 24, 2026, and is scheduled for statutory repeal on July 1, 2027 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.