This week, American Shipper published a very good article (registration required) on the state of ISF one year after flexible enforcement began last January. There were some interesting exploration on the 6 year exposure and the potential future developments on data warehouse functionality accessible via ACE. These data extracts would replace today’s status reports but due to other challenges in the ACE project, probably won’t happen any time soon.
I did find interesting that the compliance rate is up to 90% (from 80% last summer). There have been some exams at destination but to date not the teeth (i.e., Do not Load or DNL messages at origin) that was originally threatened/promised. It seems that the kinder, gentler CBP is still getting results. Of the non-compliant transactions, only 2.5% were based on inaccurate data (which shows that the trade has been good about building validations in the business systems applications to catch these errors before transmitting – always better to catch the errors yourself than get a ding for sure!).
Since CBP is continuing to see improvement with their current outreach and activities, it will be interesting to see how this year will unfold. The other interesting thing is the 6 year statute of limitations. CBP has been very flexible and hasn’t gone on any “witch hunts” – I don’t suspect they will. I get the fear of exposure by the surety guys, but also can appreciate CBP’s position if someone is “going rogue”. I suspect there will be more discussion on this point as the year progresses.
