If you imported furniture or lighting between April 2025 and February 2026, you paid extra tariffs that you can now claim back. But there's a deadline. Every day, some of that money becomes impossible to claim. This free 3-page checklist walks you through the 15 steps to file — most companies finish the setup in a week.
To file your refund claim after each shipment closes out. This is the government's working window.
The shipment is closed for good. Past day 90, you can't get that tariff money back. Ever.
If you file this month, your refund arrives by July — paid by direct deposit straight to your bank.
Between April 2025 and February 2026, the US added emergency tariffs on many imported goods — including most furniture and lighting. A court later ruled those tariffs were illegal. The government has to refund what you paid — but you have to file a claim. They won't send the money automatically.
You don't get one big deadline. Every shipment has its own 80-day countdown. When that clock runs out, that shipment is out of the program — forever. So if you imported 200 shipments over the year, some are already expired, some have weeks left, and some still have plenty of time. Acting now saves the most money.
The refund process is simpler than it sounds. You log into a free government portal, upload a list of your shipments as a spreadsheet, and submit. Most of the work is preparation — making sure your account is set up right, your bank details are on file for the refund, and your shipment list is in the correct format. That's what the checklist walks you through.
Plug in your last 12 months of qualifying imports and your average emergency tariff rate. The output is the maximum you could be due back — the actual recovery depends on how much of your shipment volume is still inside its 80-day filing window.
The checklist is built in three parts — what to do before you file, how to actually file, and what happens after. Plus reference tables your customs broker can use directly.
Confirm who's actually listed as the importer. Set up a free government portal account. Sign up for direct-deposit refunds — the #1 missed step. Then gather your shipment IDs and sort them by date.
Build a simple spreadsheet — one shipment ID per row. Upload it through the portal. The portal checks your file twice — format first, qualifying shipments second. Ineligible ones drop out automatically.
Your shipments start moving through the system in about 45 days. Refund money arrives 60–90 days after acceptance — paid as one direct deposit. Then tag your products so next time you're not scrambling.
The refund only goes to whoever's officially listed as the importer on the shipping paperwork. That's almost always the manufacturer or brand — the company that owns the product. If that's you, the money is yours to claim.
Tell us about your company. Within 48 hours, you'll get a custom check on the three things that trip people up: who's listed as the importer, whether your refund deposit is active, and which products carry the extra 25% tariff.
Furniture & Lighting PartnerThey can help, but the refund only lands in the account of whoever is the official importer on each entry — almost always your company, not the broker. You also have to confirm direct-deposit bank details under your own EIN. The broker can do the filing mechanics; you still have to own the setup.
No. The filing process is administrative, not adjudicative — it's a CSV upload through a free government portal. A licensed customs broker is sufficient for the actual submission. A lawyer only becomes relevant if the government later contests a specific claim, which is rare for standard furniture and lighting entries.
File for the rest. The 80-day clock is per-shipment, not per-importer — so expired entries don't disqualify your active ones. Most importers in the program have a mix of expired, in-window, and not-yet-eligible entries. File now; the math still works heavily in your favor.
It depends on your import volume and tariff rate, but as a rough benchmark: an importer doing $500K/year of qualifying goods at a 10% emergency tariff is owed roughly $45K back. Volume above that scales linearly. Use the calculator above for your own estimate.
This is a court-ordered refund program with a fixed window, not a discretionary protest. You aren't arguing that tariffs were misclassified — you're claiming back tariffs that a court has already ruled were illegally imposed. The filing format and burden of proof are simpler than a typical protest.