Question: Hello, If a US company ships GPS trackers to a foreign vendor to place on prototype assets and these assets are eventually returned (with the trackers) to the US, would the value of the GPS (+transportation costs of shipping the trackers) be declared as an assist when imported? Thank you, Answer 1: When a […]
Question: I have two general questions regarding assists please. Is duty paid on the full value of the assist even when the anticipated full production of merchandise is not met? Example: The value of an assist is $50,000 and the expected production of merchandise is 100,000 units. The importer pro-rates the value of the assist […]
Question: When Company X provides a tool at no charge to Supplier in Taiwan to use that tool to manufacture component goods that are then imported to the U.S., Company X must declare the value of that tool as an assist, using one of the forms of appraisement, upon entering the U.S. Question: If Company […]
Question: Trying to understand the intention/meaning of “incidental” under the assist definition in 19 CFR 152.102(a)(2)(iii) “Is incidental to other engineering, development, artwork, design work, or plans or sketches that are undertaken within the United States.” Is there a best practice for determining if incidental? For instance, our design team creates the artwork for packaging […]
Question: We have a Mexican supplier /manufacturer who is subcontracting one of our ordered parts to another Canadian supplier. The Canadian supplier will manufacture the part and ship it back our Mexican supplier. We are paying the freight from the Canadian supplier to our Mexican supplier. Would these freight charges be considered assists and applied […]
Question: Hello fellow Trade Nerds! I have a fun one for you today! Company A in Country A purchases Item 1 from Company B in Country B. Company B drop ships Item 1 to Company C in Country C under direction from Company A. Company A does not charge Company C for Item 1. Company […]
Question: Hello! In our internal audits, we have surfaced payments made to a tooling supplier where the tooling supplier is also the producer of the finished imported goods. Would customs consider these payments to be assists (and be granted flexibility for total $ declaration upon first entry of merchandised goods), or instead would they be […]
Question: We are a US based company that outsources some engineering work to a company based in India. Most of this work is related to drawing revisions and some, but minimum design work. The drawing revisions being done are related to components that we purchase both domestically as well as import. We receive a […]
Question: Hi All Quick question. Company ABC in US developed blueprint (it was done by employee of the company that will be importer later on) for new product (bottle cap). These blueprints are now sent to China so Chinese manufacturer XYZ can produce product there and export to company ABC in US Does cost associated […]
Question: My company uses a contract manufacture to make subassemblies. This contract manufacturer assembles at their maquiladora. My company has sent assist materials/tooling/etc.. directly to the maquiladora via their border warehouse in Nogales AZ. Now with the typical maquiladora process, our finished assemblies come out of Mexico and are imported through the border warehouse and […]
Question: We are a US company sending tools and tooling to our related party foreign manufacturing facility for use in the production of a finished good that will be exported to our end customer in the US. The Incoterms are EXW from the foreign facility direct to the end customer; the end customer will be […]
Question: If we send test equipment to an unrelated foreign 3rd party to test PCBs and the tested PCBs are sent to our foreign manufacturing facility to be used in the production of the final product for export to the US on an Intercompany PO; would the test equipment be considered an assist? Answer 1: […]
