Center for Federal Accountability

CBP proposes package-by-package electronic entry for low-value mail, with sender and final-recipient data and a 15-day abandonment rule

U.S. Customs and Border Protection would replace its monthly mail duty worksheet with an electronic entry for every postal shipment of $2,500 or less, add the sender and the final deliver-to party to the data it collects, require entry by arrival and treat unentered mail as abandoned after 15 days. CBP puts the net cost at about $1.09 billion a year and does not quantify the benefits; the proposal does not discuss the privacy records that would hold the new data. Comments close December 7, 2026.

2026-10-09 · U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security Department · Information · Docket USCBP-2026-0298

On October 8, 2026, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) proposed new entry rules for imports valued at $2,500 or less, which it calls informal entries, and a new electronic entry type for goods arriving by international mail (91 FR 64532, FR Doc. 2026-20650, RIN 1685-AA38). Comments close on December 7, 2026, on docket USCBP-2026-0298. No comments had been posted as of October 8, 2026. CBP designates the rule economically significant, and the Office of Management and Budget has reviewed it (91 FR 64538).

## Why CBP says it is needed

The de minimis exemption, which let shipments worth $800 or less enter duty-free without detailed entry data (91 FR 64540), has been suspended since at least August 29, 2025, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ends it on July 1, 2027 (91 FR 64532). Under a June 24, 2026 interim final rule (91 FR 37801), mail shipments are entered through a monthly International Mail Duty worksheet, usually filed by a broker and due on the 7th of the following month, after most packages have already been released. CBP says the worksheet does not require the filer to identify the importer or the consignee (91 FR 64540).

CBP reports that from September 2025 to May 2026, 24.4 million postal shipments arrived but only 16.4 million, or 67 percent, went through any entry process (91 FR 64541, 64553). In fiscal year 2024, it says, narcotics were seized from postal de minimis shipments at 277.8 per million, against 15.8 per million for informal non-mail entries and 2.6 for formal entries (91 FR 64541).

## What would change

Every informal entry, mail or not, would have to be filed electronically and no later than the date of importation, instead of within 15 days after arrival (91 FR 64534). Paper filings are already rare: 73,534 of 52,450,418 such entries from September 2025 to May 2026, or 0.14 percent.

Mail would get its own entry type, Entry Type 13, filed shipment by shipment in CBP's Automated Commercial Environment on the same entry forms (CBP Forms 3461 and 7501) used for other imports (91 FR 64535). A consignee that is not the owner or purchaser, such as a foreign postal operator, the Postal Service, a freight forwarder or a carrier, would have to appoint a licensed customs broker to act as importer of record.

Two personal data elements would be added. All informal entries would have to name the "Final Deliver-To Party (including the party's address)" when that person differs from the consignee, so CBP can "identify to whom and where the imported merchandise is destined to be delivered in the United States" (91 FR 64534-64535). Mail entries would also name the "Shipper/Sender," with identity and address, and carriers would have to report each package's international postal tracking number on the manifest so CBP can match it to the entry (91 FR 64536).

Mail not entered within 15 days of importation would be "deemed voluntarily abandoned" and handled by the Postal Service, which "may entail destruction or return of the shipment to the sender" (91 FR 64536). Every informal entry would need a customs bond, with liquidated damages of at least $1,000 per breach (91 FR 64536-64537). CBP could also require formal entry on a blanket basis by importer, manufacturer or category of goods (91 FR 64537).

## The numbers

CBP estimates the present value of the net cost over 2026 to 2035 at $9.30 billion at a 3 percent discount rate and $7.72 billion at 7 percent, or about $1.09 billion a year (91 FR 64538, 64557). It quantifies costs and some savings but not the benefits. Most of the cost is an assumed $30 broker fee plus $9.72 of filer time per mail entry, $39.72 in all, applied to 28,860,463 projected postal entries in 2027 (91 FR 64547-64548, 64559). Separately, it projects $58.6 million a year in additional duties at today's volumes if every mail shipment is entered, which it counts as a transfer, not a benefit (91 FR 64555).

CFA rechecked the per-unit figures and annualizations, and they reproduce. The cost tables are published as images that CFA could not read. CBP says it cannot quantify Postal Service warehousing, where the Service expects to need storage for 80 percent or more of import volume, the cost of returning abandoned mail, or the cost of the earlier filing deadline, which it says "could be significant" (91 FR 64545-64546, 64551).

Three internal inconsistencies stand out. The notice announcing the Entry Type 13 test (91 FR 38007) is dated July 24, 2026 in one footnote and June 24, 2026 in another (91 FR 64534, 64542). The Paperwork Reduction Act estimates count 84 carriers filing the new manifest element, while the small-business analysis counts 374 air carriers, 83 of them small (91 FR 64558, 64561). And the 2027 mail value projection ($1,392,823,929) implies a decline of about 11.7 percent, while CBP states it applied 11.63 percent; at the stated rate CFA gets about $1.394 billion, a difference under 0.1 percent.

## CFA's observations

These are CFA's observations from the published text, not findings about how the program will run.

The proposal would move tens of millions of package-level records a year, naming the U.S. recipient and the foreign sender, into CBP's entry systems. The document does not mention the Privacy Act, a system of records notice (the public notice of what records an agency keeps about people and how it uses them) or a privacy impact assessment. It does not say which notice covers final deliver-to and sender data, how long that data is kept, or who it is shared with. CBP may address this in documents outside the rule; CFA could not check them for this draft.

Under the 15-day rule, recipients bear the loss if no one files an entry. CBP says the Postal Service "anticipates a significant number of shipments would be deemed abandoned" and that "some importers may not receive their shipments" (91 FR 64549-64550). The proposal does not describe any notice to a recipient before the 15 days run out.

The Paperwork Reduction Act section counts each of the 28,860,463 projected postal entries as a separate respondent, with 10 and 5 minutes for the two entry forms and 7.2 million burden hours a year across them (91 FR 64561). Only 10 filers have used the current mail worksheet, 6 of them small U.S. businesses (91 FR 64558-64559).

## CFA's records on DHS and CBP

The Department of Homeland Security holds a "Minor" grade on CFA's agency scoreboard, with a composite score of 85.65 based on 5 areas, for the October 2026 period. The grade does not measure customs entry or this rulemaking, and CFA does not grade CBP separately. CFA's system of records analysis counts 771 DHS notices in the Federal Register export, up from 769 in the previous refresh, ranking it 9th among agencies with 3.5 percent of all notices. CFA's linkage report associates 34 Federal Register documents with CBP, a list that now includes this proposed rule itself, and has crawled no CBP privacy impact assessment pages, against 531 for DHS as a whole. CFA's own data therefore cannot show whether a CBP assessment covers the new data.

## What to watch

Whether CBP identifies, in the final rule or a separate notice, the system of records and privacy impact assessment that cover final deliver-to and sender data, and how long that data is kept.

Whether the final rule keeps the arrival-time filing deadline or adopts the alternative CBP describes of keeping the 15-day window (91 FR 64557), and whether recipients get any notice before mail is deemed abandoned.

What the Postal Service's storage and return costs turn out to be, which CBP has asked commenters to estimate, and what the Entry Type 13 test that began on September 22, 2026 shows.

Whether the final rule corrects the Entry Type 13 test date and reconciles the carrier counts.

Comments can be filed on regulations.gov under docket USCBP-2026-0298. Comments on the information collections can also go to the email address listed in the notice (91 FR 64561).

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