Customs and Export Compliance
Capital Trade’s clients often call on our extensive trade regulatory and data processing expertise to assist with a variety of U.S. CBP and export control issues. Since our start in 1992, we have worked with law firms and companies on numerous U.S. CBP-related projects. Our consultants have significant experience in compliance audit, prior disclosure, classification, country-of-origin, entry liquidation, fraud, and related issues. Capital Trade’s analysts, skilled CBP data processors, have developed customized databases, computer programs, and methodologies critical to in-house and U.S. government analyses. We continue to expand this practice area with the addition of denied party screening. Designed entirely in-house at Capital Trade, we are pleased to provide proven, cost-effective denied party screening services for low to moderate risk companies.
U.S. CBP Consulting, Data Processing and Analysis
Capital Trade consultants provide specialized consultation and advice on a variety of Customs issues including:
Country-of-origin and NAFTA country-of-origin classification
Tariff classification research and analysis
Accurate reporting and classification vis-à-vis FTZ inventory tracking procedures and FIFO inventory tracking systems.
Special “section 807” tariff treatment
Customs value analysis and calculation
Customs fraud analysis
Liquidation monitoring and assistance (i.e., identification of missing entries and other analyses to ensure proper assessment)
Compliance assessment and Customs audit support
We also offer a variety of CBP data-related services ranging from simple database merges to complex analyses as follows:
Organize, merge, and refine raw customs data to create databases critical to in-house and/or government analysis and evaluation
Monitor entry data to calculate interest over- and under-payments, and identify shortfalls in refunds due.
Apply attribute discovery sampling (using EZ-Quant® software) to generate random sample databases and assist companies in accordance with the U.S. CBP’s Focused Assessment Program.
Develop databases, methodologies, and computer programming necessary to identify and quantify reporting errors, assist with prior disclosures, and calculate additional duties and/or fees owed.
Denied Party Screening
U.S. companies are required to protect against doing business with organizations, persons, companies and other entities contained on any one of several published U.S. government lists of restricted/denied parties. Fail to comply, and a company risks penalties, fines or worse. There are various software and web-based services currently available to screen customer names for matches to the U.S. government lists. Unfortunately, these services better address the needs of larger, high-risk companies that can easily justify the expense. Smaller companies with low to moderate risk profiles, requiring only periodic screening and unable to justify the cost of existing services, have no alternatives. These companies are forced to either incur the expense of existing services, or undertake time-consuming manual screens – tediously comparing customer names against the U.S. government’s numerous lists on their own.
Capital Trade is pleased to offer a proven, cost-effective, denied party screening service designed to specifically address the needs of smaller, low to moderate risk companies that wish to screen customer names against the following lists:
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list
The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Standards’ Denied Persons (DPL), Unverified and Entity Lists
The U.S. Directorate for Defense Trade Controls’ Statutory and Administrative Debarment Lists
At the heart of our screening process are consolidated databases and a specialized computer program developed entirely in-house at Capital Trade in response to a client request for a reliable alternative to existing screening services. First, we download the most recent versions of the U.S. government’s constantly-changing lists to create consolidated databases containing the most accurate and up-to-date information available. Next, we programmatically apply a series of filters that systematically evaluate and “score” each entity, organization, person and company name in the databases as a potential match to each of a client’s customers. Taking spelling variations and differences in word order and the number of words into account, we isolate those comparisons yielding the highest scores, and generate detailed reports identifying the identical and highest scoring non-identical matches that warrant additional investigation and review.
Our screening does not require the purchase of specialized software or subscriptions. We bill for each individual screen based on the total number of customer names screened. Whether you require screening of your entire customer base, only a few names, a one-time-only screen, or regular, periodic checks our service delivers reliable, cost-effective results in a timely manner. For further information contact Valerie Owenby at vowenby@captrade.com.
