The 15-day entry window is being closed

The Federal Register of 8 October 2026 carries a CBP proposed rule called Low-Value Shipments. It is about the informal entry, the procedure for merchandise valued at $2,500 or less, and most of the coverage it will get is about parcels and de minimis. One sentence in it is about every desk that files one.

Two weeks after, becomes before

Today, 19 CFR 141.5 gives you fifteen calendar days from landing to make entry. Formal, informal, it does not matter: fifteen days after the cargo is on the ground.

CBP’s objection is operational, and it says so plainly. The current window “does not provide CBP with sufficient time to properly conduct risk assessment and targeting before the arrival of such potentially dangerous or unlawful importations”. So the proposal sets the deadline for an entry type 11 at “upon or prior to the date of importation”, and “date of importation” is not a soft phrase. It is defined at 19 CFR 101.1 as the day the vessel arrives within port limits intending to unlade.

Read those two deadlines next to each other and the shift is not fifteen days. It is the difference between a filing that follows the cargo and a filing that has to be waiting for it.

Why that is a documents problem and not a filing problem

Fifteen days after landing is a comfortable deadline for a reason that has nothing to do with customs. It is comfortable because it sits inside the period when the shipping documents finally turn up. The commercial invoice is being corrected, the packing list is being reconciled, the supplier is being asked for the manufacturer’s registered address, and the entry gets filed once the pack is straight.

Move the deadline in front of the vessel and that sequence inverts. The pack has to be straight while the ship is still at sea. Nothing about the filing got harder. CBP puts the transmission itself at ten minutes. What got harder is being ready, and being ready is the part that is somebody else’s homework.

This is the same structure as the clock a late document pack already runs into. Packs routinely run about eight days late; the terminal and the carrier both start charging from discharge. The proposal adds a third deadline that falls earlier than either, and unlike demurrage it is not negotiable after the fact.

Every informal entry gets a bond

The second change is quieter and costs money.

A formal entry has always needed a basic importation and entry bond on the conditions in 19 CFR 113.62. An informal entry has needed one only in particular situations. CBP proposes to require one on every type 11 and type 13 entry: a single transaction bond or a continuous bond, with the broker’s own bond obligated where a consignee has had to appoint one.

Alongside it, a new floor. For most of the bond conditions, liquidated damages are currently set at the value of the merchandise involved in the default. On a $900 shipment that is a $900 exposure, and CBP says collecting it can cost more than it recovers. So the proposal amends 19 CFR 113.62(n) to set a minimum of $1,000 for each breach of a listed condition on a type 11 or type 13 entry. On low-value cargo, the penalty floor is now above the goods.

A new fact to hold: the Final Deliver-To Party

The third change adds a data element. Where the party the goods are finally going to is not the ultimate consignee named on the entry summary, the entry would have to carry that party’s identity and address. CBP calls it the Final Deliver-To Party, “the final intended recipient of the shipment, as known at the time of filing”.

It is a small field with an awkward home. On a trading book the final recipient is in the sales order, not the customs file, and the two are often maintained by different people on different systems. A desk that drops the ball here drops it because nobody owned the question, which is the ordinary way this work fails.

And a consignee can no longer self-appoint

CBP also proposes amending 19 CFR 143.26(a) so that a consignee who is neither the owner nor the purchaser of the goods (a freight forwarder, a carrier, USPS, a foreign postal operator) must appoint a licensed customs broker, and that broker acts as importer of record. The exception for duty-free shipments under 19 U.S.C. 1321(a)(2)(A) and (B) stays as it is.

For an importer buying FOB and clearing in its own name, nothing changes. For anyone whose forwarder has been entering low-value shipments as consignee, the filing moves to a broker and the broker’s bond carries it.

One change that cuts the other way

Not everything in the rule tightens. CBP proposes removing the $250 ceiling that currently blocks informal entry for goods classified in Chapter 99, Subchapters III and IV of the tariff, which is where the Section 232 and similar additional duties live. A shipment worth $251 to $2,500 that happens to carry a Section 232 duty is forced into formal entry today. Under the proposal it would not be. CBP notes the same change was made to other informal entry regulations back in 2012.

Where the paper goes

One number in the rule explains why electronic filing is being made mandatory rather than encouraged. Between 1 September 2025 and 31 May 2026 there were 52,450,418 type 11 entries. 73,534 of them were filed on paper: 0.14%, typed into ACE afterwards by CBP staff.

Which is the shape of most compliance arguments on an import desk. The exception is rare enough to feel safe and expensive enough that somebody eventually legislates it away.

What to do before 7 December

Comments close on 7 December 2026, and this is a proposal, not a rule. Two things are worth doing now rather than after.

Find out which of your US entries are type 11. The code is on the 7501 and your broker picks it; if you are importing samples, spares, replacement parts or small trial orders, more of your book is informal than you think. Then ask one question of each: on the day that vessel enters port limits, is the entry data complete? Not the pack. The thirteen facts CBP’s release list names.

If the honest answer is “usually, a few days later”, the proposal is not a paperwork change. It is a chasing deadline, and it moves to before the ship arrives.

And the postal channel is moving on the outbound side too. On 19 October 2026 the Postal Service added a section to the International Mail Manual on unpaid destination customs charges, under which USPS invoices the mailer for duties a foreign authority could not collect from the addressee — payable in full even where the mailer disputes the assessment.