8 ms·

Am I understanding this right? 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. 2) Seller sends the collected tax to the US

by xnx 9mo ago

Am I understanding this right? 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. 2) Seller sends the collected tax to the US government 3) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to the seller after this ruling 4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer)

not_a_bot_4sho 9mo ago
There have been no decisions about refunds. The court avoided addressing that. That topic will surely go back to the courts, kicking and screaming
- conductr 9mo ago
  Personally think it should not get refunded. There’s no sane way to get it back to its source. And no one group should be making profit from it. Best if it stays with the government like a federal forfeiture so in theory we all benefit from it as citizens , maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year.
  - czl 9mo ago
    Not a bad idea, but how do we prevent this from creating incentives to engineer similar situations in the future?
    - nathan_compton 9mo ago
      Presumably such future attempts would be stopped immediately given this ruling.
  - ngc248 9mo ago
    Government is a poor spender, we should not be handing them more money
    - conductr 9mo ago
      We all participate in this system through, most of “us” passively. Use the normal means to enact the change you want to see
  - hermanzegerman 9mo ago
    So illegal actions shouldn't have consequences for anyone? That's a good way to deter such acts in the future
    - conductr 9mo ago
      That’s a separate issue from where the already paid tariffs should go
      - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
        No, it isn't. Because there is no deterrent against future illegal actions in the future, if there won't be reimbursements. Trump will just declare illegal tariffs again, until the Scotus strikes it down and then repeat
  - FpUser 9mo ago
    >"maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year." And help to prosecute those who broke the law and raised illegal tax /s
jleyank 9mo ago
Seller wasn’t involved in the tariffs. Rather the importer paid them, etc.
- xnx 9mo ago
  Who pays the importer?
  - jleyank 9mo ago
    Seller doing the importing, so they pay the foreign entity for their goods and sends the appropriate cut to the US Government. At that point, they either eat the additional cost of business or make their customers do so. Or something in between. Tariffs are like a national sales tax.
  - pests 9mo ago
    The person who wants it imported, the buyer?
- croes 9mo ago
  I guess by seller parent means the US company who sold the product to the US customer not the seller who sold it to that company.
- magicalhippo 9mo ago
  > Seller wasn’t involved in the tariffs. Rather the importer paid them Strictly speaking it depends on the Incoterms agreed upon by the seller and buyer[1]. If the Incoterms are DDP, then the seller should pay import duties and taxes and as such is involved. Of course sellers are typically trying to run a business, so they'll bake the taxes and import duties into the sales price. So effectively the buyer ends up paying for it, just indirectly. This was relevant when the tariffs were introduced, as sellers with DDP goods in transit had committed to a sales price which included any tariffs and would have to swallow the extra costs when they got the bill from the freight forwarder. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_risks_to_buyer/seller_according_to_Incoterms_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_risks...
sc68cal 9mo ago
The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer. So the importers are the one that had the tax collected from them and would be getting the refund. The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.
- sowbug 9mo ago
  To the CPAs among us: will the refunded import taxes be treated as extra profit for all the importers who paid them? I could see an argument that they don't have a legal obligation to pass the refunds on to their customers, any more than my local grocery store owes me 5 cents for the gallon of milk I bought last year if the store discovers that their wholesaler had been mistakenly overcharging them.
  - sc68cal 9mo ago
    That's a great question. I would also love to know that answer. I agree with you that they're not going to share the refund if the importer was the middleman in the supply chain, and same thing if the importer was also the seller.
    - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
      There is a 1099 specifically for money received from the government. https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-g https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-g
  - mattas 9mo ago
    The idea of getting a refund for mischaracterized tariffs is actually fairly common (it's called a duty drawback and there's a cottage industry around this). It's generally used when an importer incorrectly categorized their import under an HS code that has a higher duty than the correctly categorized HS code. The difference this time is the scale is orders of magnitude larger. Will be interesting to see how they (importers and CBP) work through this.
sowbug 9mo ago
Or maybe this is used to justify a new emergency federal law that all purchases must be reported on your tax return, just in case the government ever needs to refund any illegally collected import taxes. I think I'm kidding, but I'm not really sure anymore.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  A federal law has to be approved by Congress, that isn’t happening. An executive order maybe?
  - scott_w 9mo ago
    That would be no more legal than what the Supreme Court just struck down.
- Broken_Hippo 9mo ago
  Indiana has sometimes required that for decades, though I think they finally adjusted the law a little after online purchases became popular. Indiana charges sales tax like a lot of states, but only on things sold in the state or from a company located in the state. If you ordered something from California or overseas, no sales tax was charged. The law required you to track these purchases and report it on your tax return so you can pay the required sales tax. That said, enforcement wasn't good and I don't know a single person that actually did so. A common tax fraud for the average person, I guess. And honestly, I think any emergency federal law would be similar: It wouldn't be for refunds for the masses, but for surveillance and extortion.
  - projektfu 9mo ago
    Yeah, most states that have sales taxes have "use taxes" to cover this case and the case of a wholesale item (no tax) being used in house. It gets enforced primarily in retrospect and on big ticket items that the state does see, like a vehicle purchase.
    - Broken_Hippo 9mo ago
lokar 9mo ago
Most of the total tax collected seems to have been absorbed by the importers, lowering margins.
- dawnerd 9mo ago
  The price of googs this last year bed to differ. Maybe for some bigger companies on certain products but what stores like Walmart did was spread the price increase across all products so it wasn’t as obvious. And that’s now where it’s going to suck the most, prices are not going to come down. Ends up being a free handout to them.
- xnx 9mo ago
  Where did you hear that? It is conclusively the opposite: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-consumers-business-nearly-90-percent-new-york-federal-reserve/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-consumers-busines...
apexalpha 9mo ago
There are usually a few companies between the importer and the consumer. So the importers could only refund the business they sold it to and likely won't if nothing was specified in the purchase contract. Though this is obviously a first so expect a billion lawsuits about this.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
furyofantares 9mo ago
Why do we repeatedly say that tarrifs are passed off in full to the consumer in the form of higher prices? Isn't that as obviously wrong as the argument for them, that they're paid entirely by the other countries? Is there a reason to believe, or evidence, that it's not a mixture of the two? edit: I want to highlight esseph's reply has a link to evidence that last year's tarrifs were passed off 90% to consumers, which is exactly the type of info I was looking for.
- JDEW 9mo ago
  > by the other countries That makes zero sense. You mean “by lowering the profit margin on the goods sold to the US by that specific company”. Countries don’t pay tarrifs (bar state intervention), companies do. But yes, it’s probably a mix of the two: raising prices and lowering profit margins.
- AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
  Well, the analysis by the Federal Reserve said that domestic entities (consumers and companies) paid 90% of it. So, yes, saying that consumers pay it all is wrong, but it's less wrong than saying that foreign countries pay it all. I don't recall seeing a split between domestic consumers and domestic companies, but I'm fairly sure that consumers are paying more than the 10% that foreign entities are.
- NoLinkToMe 9mo ago
  It is a mixture of the two. But my reading of various studies indicates that in this mixture, the majority was passed to consumers in the form of higher prices.
- Hikikomori 9mo ago
  It's much more true than saying that the foreign company pays it. Depends on how much slack there is in profit margins for both the exporter and importer, but the consumer does pay most of it, like 90%.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
jrmg 9mo ago
Can I get compensation from UPS or FedEx for making me pay illegal tariffs - and making me pay a fee to them for processing it too? (I know the answer is practically ’no’, but it does still seem to me that the bureaucracy and companies that went along with this obviously illegal operation bear some culpability...)
- xnx 9mo ago
  That's be nice, but I place more blame on the half of Congress that was OK with this.
- teeray 9mo ago
  If everyone sued them in small claims over it, there probably would be a whole lot of default judgments.
  - jagged-chisel 9mo ago
    Then you’re on your own to collect.
    - staticautomatic 9mo ago
      You’re always on your own to collect.
- fn-mote 9mo ago
  > Can I get compensation from UPS or FedEx for making me pay illegal tariffs - and making me pay a fee to them for processing it too? I can see why you are mad, but it seems like the were fulfilling their legal obligation (at the time). The good news is that having directly paid UPS and not a middleman makes it much more likely that you will receive the money back. If anybody does.
  - xorcist 9mo ago
    > it seems like the were fulfilling their legal obligation (at the time) Rather, their illegal obligation (at the time)? It was clear from the start these import tariffs are illegal. Only congress can set them. It says so in the constitution! Hand waving at some pretend emergency doesn't give you the right to ignore constitutional law. The logistics companies should probably have fought these clearly illegal tariffs from the start. Instead they played along and collected the fees. There's probably some interesting legal precedence here to be made, should this argument hold in court.
rtkwe 9mo ago
Sometimes the consumer (more) directly pays when buying from overseas, most of the time you're right it gets rolled into the price at checkout if the company is large enough or just in larger prices buying in the US. I've had a few packages I had to pay extra import duties on with the UPS/FedEx agent fees tacked on top mostly kickstarters.
- xnx 9mo ago
  Understandable. With the intentional chaos since last year, tariffs were changing mid-shipment without any prior notice.
  - rtkwe 9mo ago
    It's less that and more that the sender just didn't arrange to prepay it for the receiver rather than it being in flux. A lot of shippers do handle it to avoid the surprise for customers but some didn't have the setup to do the prepayment.
pclmulqdq 9mo ago
When I have bought things internationally, I have always been the one doing the importing. This means I paid some Trump taxes and I will get my money back.
- xnx 9mo ago
  I hope so!
webXL 9mo ago
In October, I bought a $250 product from a Canadian company + about $30 shipping & taxes and thought I was good. A few weeks later, FedEx sends me an $92 bill for the duty that they had to pay. I just ignored it since I was never given that notice up front. If they really wanted it, they could have had the vendor contact me. But at least they're not getting that bit of profit now.
- bakies 9mo ago
  I'm also ignoring a bill, from UPS, that is a few bucks of duty and a much larger $14 fee. Presumably the large fee is because UPS isn't meant to collect taxes, but they can suck it.
- testing22321 9mo ago
  For what it’s worth, FedEx paid the tariff on your behalf . You owe them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they withhold future packages to your address until you settle up. If they’re smart, they set it up so you owe the government.
- ngc248 9mo ago
  they may start rcharging you warehouse storage fees and demurrage fees. chec out what happens if you dont take the delivery
dgellow 9mo ago
Or the government will not refund, and add more illegal tariffs. That wouldn’t be surprising, unfortunately
vkou 9mo ago
> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer) Elections have consequences.
SmirkingRevenge 9mo ago
I think people are getting ahead of themselves on the refund business. Refunds might be on the table, they also may not be. It may be a years long battle. Trump and co might put up enough resistance that many firms find it too costly to fight.
beloch 9mo ago
This will be so in some cases, but there are extra steps in others. e.g. In a different path, 1 and 2 are the same, but things then diverge. 3) To recoup some of those tariff costs, the company sells the rights to any potential future tariff refunds. They recoup a portion of what they paid immediately but hand away the right to a full refund to another party, such as Cantor Fitzgerald. The seller might use this to reduce prices for their customers, but probably won't. They'll set prices according to what the market will support. 4) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to companies, like Cantor Fitzgerald, that bought the rights to tariff refunds. 5) Seller doesn't get any extra money back, so there's no money to refund to consumers. IMPORTANT NOTE: Cantor Fitzgerald, while just one of the companies doing this, was formerly headed by Howard Lutnick and is currently owned and operated by his sons.
- madaxe_again 9mo ago
  How is this not reverse Byzantine tax farming?
  - lesuorac 9mo ago
    Where you going with this? Afaik, Byzantine (or reverse) and other private tax collection setups aren't illegal.
    - madaxe_again 9mo ago
      “Not illegal” != “very very good for everybody”
      - lesuorac 8mo ago
        Sure. My point is strictly say what you want to mean. If you believe this is bad for society then say "I can't see how allowing others to profit from your tax refund is good" and not "How is this not reverse Byzantine tax farming?".
        8mo ago
mandeepj 9mo ago
> 4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit Seller may not reduce the price as well. Thus, continues to keep the raised price due to tariffs as free profit.
- chii 9mo ago
  Unless there's only one seller, why won't one of them just lower their price slightly to gain a market share edge and increase their total profit (even if margins slightly drop)?
  - mandeepj 8mo ago
    https://fortune.com/2026/02/23/goldman-sachs-us-consumers-higher-prices-tariff-inflation-supreme-court-refunds-scott-bessent/ https://fortune.com/2026/02/23/goldman-sachs-us-consumers-hi...
kopirgan 9mo ago
Refunds are very complicated. How does the co even know who bought? As it goes thru several layers of distribution chain. Assuming they want to refund of course. I suppose they will claim they reduced prices (or more likely deferred price increases, how nice!) And then not all tariff was absorbed by importer - some suppliers would have cut prices to compensate wholly or partly. We would never know as it is likely buried in various other discounts and contract terms not a line item that says "for tariff". Down the chain, others with margins could have done the same. That's probably why the inflation impact was less than scary scenarios painted by some economists.
strathmeyer 9mo ago
[dead]
phil21 9mo ago
What I think is interesting is if there is going to be a legal distinction between a seller raising their prices 10% for the item itself vs. a seller charging a separate line item for tariffs/customs/duties. I can see a situation where the courts find that a general price increase is simply they - an offer to sell at a price the buyer accepted regardless of the seller's motivation to increase pricing. However a line item that very clearly states that a charge is for duties paid might be treated differently? Very curious to see what the legal minds have to say in this scenario. In a way it may punish companies for doing what many to most consumers feel was the "right" thing to do - add a surcharge that can easily be removed if the situation changed in the future vs. using a general increase as a new price anchor.
- aiauthoritydev 9mo ago
  You are right but the current admin arm twisted folks from showing that kind of line item.
aiauthoritydev 9mo ago
It is more complicated than that. Seller sold forward contracts to recoup tariffs at a lower price and passed on the benefits to the consumers already. E.g. For every $1 seller paid as tariffs, seller sold a contract to someone for $0.25 saying if government ever refunds the buyer of the contract can keep it. The $0.25 already passed to consumers as benefits. > Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer) Not to the specific customer but this benefits will now get passed to future customers as prices will be lowered than usual (lower than pre-tariff prices) due to competition. Note that consumers who paid more were not necessarily paying the tariffs. Stores like Costco, Walmart increased prices across the board and socialized the impact of tariffs. Even if there was some mechanism to return tariff money to consumer, there is no way you could return it to someone who paid higher due to this socialized nature of price increase.
- zaik 9mo ago
  Guess who took the other side of those forward contracts: https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-refunds/ https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-r...
yalogin 9mo ago
It’s worse. Sellers raised prices citing tariffs. Not only does the seller get a one time bonus, the prices are now permanently raised as we all know prices are never coming down
- xnx 9mo ago
  The willingness of the customer to buy from competitors is the only thing that ever effects prices.
aaronrobinson 9mo ago
5) US Gov uses a different law 6) Go to step 1
Betelbuddy 9mo ago
>> 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. Not according to the current administration: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CODFD3j623E https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CODFD3j623E According to them, China and others are paying the tariffs, so any refunds clearly have to go to China...
- Betelbuddy 9mo ago
  You are downvoting the messenger. In a way...its an IQ test... "Trump says China is paying for his tariffs" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-says-china-paying-his-tariffs-he-s-n1038751 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-tru... "Trump Incorrectly Has Insisted ‘China’s Paying the Tariffs’" - https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000006661985/trump-china-tariffs.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000006661985/tr... "Fact check: Trump and Vance keep falsely describing how tariffs work" - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/fact-check-trump-vance-tariffs https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/fact-check-trump...
DivingForGold 9mo ago
Trump responds that it will be litigated, like 5 years worth . . .
gdilla 9mo ago
yes, because the US elected a clown, and this is the clown show.

by xnx 9mo ago

not_a_bot_4sho 9mo ago

There have been no decisions about refunds. The court avoided addressing that. That topic will surely go back to the courts, kicking and screaming

conductr 9mo ago
Personally think it should not get refunded. There’s no sane way to get it back to its source. And no one group should be making profit from it. Best if it stays with the government like a federal forfeiture so in theory we all benefit from it as citizens , maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year.
- czl 9mo ago
  Not a bad idea, but how do we prevent this from creating incentives to engineer similar situations in the future?
  - nathan_compton 9mo ago
    Presumably such future attempts would be stopped immediately given this ruling.
- ngc248 9mo ago
  Government is a poor spender, we should not be handing them more money
  - conductr 9mo ago
    We all participate in this system through, most of “us” passively. Use the normal means to enact the change you want to see
- hermanzegerman 9mo ago
  So illegal actions shouldn't have consequences for anyone? That's a good way to deter such acts in the future
  - conductr 9mo ago
    That’s a separate issue from where the already paid tariffs should go
    - hermanzegerman 8mo ago
      No, it isn't. Because there is no deterrent against future illegal actions in the future, if there won't be reimbursements. Trump will just declare illegal tariffs again, until the Scotus strikes it down and then repeat
- FpUser 9mo ago
  >"maybe it goes against the national debt or lessens our deficit next year." And help to prosecute those who broke the law and raised illegal tax /s

jleyank 9mo ago

Seller wasn’t involved in the tariffs. Rather the importer paid them, etc.

xnx 9mo ago
Who pays the importer?
- jleyank 9mo ago
  Seller doing the importing, so they pay the foreign entity for their goods and sends the appropriate cut to the US Government. At that point, they either eat the additional cost of business or make their customers do so. Or something in between. Tariffs are like a national sales tax.
- pests 9mo ago
  The person who wants it imported, the buyer?
croes 9mo ago
I guess by seller parent means the US company who sold the product to the US customer not the seller who sold it to that company.
magicalhippo 9mo ago
> Seller wasn’t involved in the tariffs. Rather the importer paid them Strictly speaking it depends on the Incoterms agreed upon by the seller and buyer[1]. If the Incoterms are DDP, then the seller should pay import duties and taxes and as such is involved. Of course sellers are typically trying to run a business, so they'll bake the taxes and import duties into the sales price. So effectively the buyer ends up paying for it, just indirectly. This was relevant when the tariffs were introduced, as sellers with DDP goods in transit had committed to a sales price which included any tariffs and would have to swallow the extra costs when they got the bill from the freight forwarder. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_risks_to_buyer/seller_according_to_Incoterms_2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_risks...

sc68cal 9mo ago

The importer pays the tax and passes it on as higher prices to the consumer. So the importers are the one that had the tax collected from them and would be getting the refund. The importer CAN be the seller, but other times the importer is a middleman in the supply chain.

sowbug 9mo ago
To the CPAs among us: will the refunded import taxes be treated as extra profit for all the importers who paid them? I could see an argument that they don't have a legal obligation to pass the refunds on to their customers, any more than my local grocery store owes me 5 cents for the gallon of milk I bought last year if the store discovers that their wholesaler had been mistakenly overcharging them.
- sc68cal 9mo ago
  That's a great question. I would also love to know that answer. I agree with you that they're not going to share the refund if the importer was the middleman in the supply chain, and same thing if the importer was also the seller.
  - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
    There is a 1099 specifically for money received from the government. https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-g https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1099-g
- mattas 9mo ago
  The idea of getting a refund for mischaracterized tariffs is actually fairly common (it's called a duty drawback and there's a cottage industry around this). It's generally used when an importer incorrectly categorized their import under an HS code that has a higher duty than the correctly categorized HS code. The difference this time is the scale is orders of magnitude larger. Will be interesting to see how they (importers and CBP) work through this.

sowbug 9mo ago

Or maybe this is used to justify a new emergency federal law that all purchases must be reported on your tax return, just in case the government ever needs to refund any illegally collected import taxes. I think I'm kidding, but I'm not really sure anymore.

seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
A federal law has to be approved by Congress, that isn’t happening. An executive order maybe?
- scott_w 9mo ago
  That would be no more legal than what the Supreme Court just struck down.
Broken_Hippo 9mo ago
Indiana has sometimes required that for decades, though I think they finally adjusted the law a little after online purchases became popular. Indiana charges sales tax like a lot of states, but only on things sold in the state or from a company located in the state. If you ordered something from California or overseas, no sales tax was charged. The law required you to track these purchases and report it on your tax return so you can pay the required sales tax. That said, enforcement wasn't good and I don't know a single person that actually did so. A common tax fraud for the average person, I guess. And honestly, I think any emergency federal law would be similar: It wouldn't be for refunds for the masses, but for surveillance and extortion.
- projektfu 9mo ago
  Yeah, most states that have sales taxes have "use taxes" to cover this case and the case of a wholesale item (no tax) being used in house. It gets enforced primarily in retrospect and on big ticket items that the state does see, like a vehicle purchase.
  - Broken_Hippo 9mo ago

lokar 9mo ago

Most of the total tax collected seems to have been absorbed by the importers, lowering margins.

dawnerd 9mo ago
The price of googs this last year bed to differ. Maybe for some bigger companies on certain products but what stores like Walmart did was spread the price increase across all products so it wasn’t as obvious. And that’s now where it’s going to suck the most, prices are not going to come down. Ends up being a free handout to them.
xnx 9mo ago
Where did you hear that? It is conclusively the opposite: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-consumers-business-nearly-90-percent-new-york-federal-reserve/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-consumers-busines...

apexalpha 9mo ago

There are usually a few companies between the importer and the consumer. So the importers could only refund the business they sold it to and likely won't if nothing was specified in the purchase contract. Though this is obviously a first so expect a billion lawsuits about this.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

furyofantares 9mo ago

Why do we repeatedly say that tarrifs are passed off in full to the consumer in the form of higher prices? Isn't that as obviously wrong as the argument for them, that they're paid entirely by the other countries? Is there a reason to believe, or evidence, that it's not a mixture of the two? edit: I want to highlight esseph's reply has a link to evidence that last year's tarrifs were passed off 90% to consumers, which is exactly the type of info I was looking for.

JDEW 9mo ago
> by the other countries That makes zero sense. You mean “by lowering the profit margin on the goods sold to the US by that specific company”. Countries don’t pay tarrifs (bar state intervention), companies do. But yes, it’s probably a mix of the two: raising prices and lowering profit margins.
AnimalMuppet 9mo ago
Well, the analysis by the Federal Reserve said that domestic entities (consumers and companies) paid 90% of it. So, yes, saying that consumers pay it all is wrong, but it's less wrong than saying that foreign countries pay it all. I don't recall seeing a split between domestic consumers and domestic companies, but I'm fairly sure that consumers are paying more than the 10% that foreign entities are.
NoLinkToMe 9mo ago
It is a mixture of the two. But my reading of various studies indicates that in this mixture, the majority was passed to consumers in the form of higher prices.
Hikikomori 9mo ago
It's much more true than saying that the foreign company pays it. Depends on how much slack there is in profit margins for both the exporter and importer, but the consumer does pay most of it, like 90%.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]

jrmg 9mo ago

Can I get compensation from UPS or FedEx for making me pay illegal tariffs - and making me pay a fee to them for processing it too? (I know the answer is practically ’no’, but it does still seem to me that the bureaucracy and companies that went along with this obviously illegal operation bear some culpability...)

xnx 9mo ago
That's be nice, but I place more blame on the half of Congress that was OK with this.
teeray 9mo ago
If everyone sued them in small claims over it, there probably would be a whole lot of default judgments.
- jagged-chisel 9mo ago
  Then you’re on your own to collect.
  - staticautomatic 9mo ago
    You’re always on your own to collect.
fn-mote 9mo ago
> Can I get compensation from UPS or FedEx for making me pay illegal tariffs - and making me pay a fee to them for processing it too? I can see why you are mad, but it seems like the were fulfilling their legal obligation (at the time). The good news is that having directly paid UPS and not a middleman makes it much more likely that you will receive the money back. If anybody does.
- xorcist 9mo ago
  > it seems like the were fulfilling their legal obligation (at the time) Rather, their illegal obligation (at the time)? It was clear from the start these import tariffs are illegal. Only congress can set them. It says so in the constitution! Hand waving at some pretend emergency doesn't give you the right to ignore constitutional law. The logistics companies should probably have fought these clearly illegal tariffs from the start. Instead they played along and collected the fees. There's probably some interesting legal precedence here to be made, should this argument hold in court.

rtkwe 9mo ago

Sometimes the consumer (more) directly pays when buying from overseas, most of the time you're right it gets rolled into the price at checkout if the company is large enough or just in larger prices buying in the US. I've had a few packages I had to pay extra import duties on with the UPS/FedEx agent fees tacked on top mostly kickstarters.

xnx 9mo ago
Understandable. With the intentional chaos since last year, tariffs were changing mid-shipment without any prior notice.
- rtkwe 9mo ago
  It's less that and more that the sender just didn't arrange to prepay it for the receiver rather than it being in flux. A lot of shippers do handle it to avoid the surprise for customers but some didn't have the setup to do the prepayment.

pclmulqdq 9mo ago

When I have bought things internationally, I have always been the one doing the importing. This means I paid some Trump taxes and I will get my money back.

xnx 9mo ago
I hope so!

webXL 9mo ago

In October, I bought a $250 product from a Canadian company + about $30 shipping & taxes and thought I was good. A few weeks later, FedEx sends me an $92 bill for the duty that they had to pay. I just ignored it since I was never given that notice up front. If they really wanted it, they could have had the vendor contact me. But at least they're not getting that bit of profit now.

bakies 9mo ago
I'm also ignoring a bill, from UPS, that is a few bucks of duty and a much larger $14 fee. Presumably the large fee is because UPS isn't meant to collect taxes, but they can suck it.
testing22321 9mo ago
For what it’s worth, FedEx paid the tariff on your behalf . You owe them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they withhold future packages to your address until you settle up. If they’re smart, they set it up so you owe the government.
ngc248 9mo ago
they may start rcharging you warehouse storage fees and demurrage fees. chec out what happens if you dont take the delivery

dgellow 9mo ago

Or the government will not refund, and add more illegal tariffs. That wouldn’t be surprising, unfortunately

vkou 9mo ago

> Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer) Elections have consequences.

SmirkingRevenge 9mo ago

I think people are getting ahead of themselves on the refund business. Refunds might be on the table, they also may not be. It may be a years long battle. Trump and co might put up enough resistance that many firms find it too costly to fight.

beloch 9mo ago

This will be so in some cases, but there are extra steps in others. e.g. In a different path, 1 and 2 are the same, but things then diverge. 3) To recoup some of those tariff costs, the company sells the rights to any potential future tariff refunds. They recoup a portion of what they paid immediately but hand away the right to a full refund to another party, such as Cantor Fitzgerald. The seller might use this to reduce prices for their customers, but probably won't. They'll set prices according to what the market will support. 4) US government will refund all/most of that tax back to companies, like Cantor Fitzgerald, that bought the rights to tariff refunds. 5) Seller doesn't get any extra money back, so there's no money to refund to consumers. IMPORTANT NOTE: Cantor Fitzgerald, while just one of the companies doing this, was formerly headed by Howard Lutnick and is currently owned and operated by his sons.

madaxe_again 9mo ago
How is this not reverse Byzantine tax farming?
- lesuorac 9mo ago
  Where you going with this? Afaik, Byzantine (or reverse) and other private tax collection setups aren't illegal.
  - madaxe_again 9mo ago
    “Not illegal” != “very very good for everybody”
    - lesuorac 8mo ago
      Sure. My point is strictly say what you want to mean. If you believe this is bad for society then say "I can't see how allowing others to profit from your tax refund is good" and not "How is this not reverse Byzantine tax farming?".
      - 8mo ago

mandeepj 9mo ago

> 4) Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit Seller may not reduce the price as well. Thus, continues to keep the raised price due to tariffs as free profit.

chii 9mo ago
Unless there's only one seller, why won't one of them just lower their price slightly to gain a market share edge and increase their total profit (even if margins slightly drop)?
- mandeepj 8mo ago
  https://fortune.com/2026/02/23/goldman-sachs-us-consumers-higher-prices-tariff-inflation-supreme-court-refunds-scott-bessent/ https://fortune.com/2026/02/23/goldman-sachs-us-consumers-hi...

kopirgan 9mo ago

Refunds are very complicated. How does the co even know who bought? As it goes thru several layers of distribution chain. Assuming they want to refund of course. I suppose they will claim they reduced prices (or more likely deferred price increases, how nice!) And then not all tariff was absorbed by importer - some suppliers would have cut prices to compensate wholly or partly. We would never know as it is likely buried in various other discounts and contract terms not a line item that says "for tariff". Down the chain, others with margins could have done the same. That's probably why the inflation impact was less than scary scenarios painted by some economists.

strathmeyer 9mo ago

[dead]

phil21 9mo ago

What I think is interesting is if there is going to be a legal distinction between a seller raising their prices 10% for the item itself vs. a seller charging a separate line item for tariffs/customs/duties. I can see a situation where the courts find that a general price increase is simply they - an offer to sell at a price the buyer accepted regardless of the seller's motivation to increase pricing. However a line item that very clearly states that a charge is for duties paid might be treated differently? Very curious to see what the legal minds have to say in this scenario. In a way it may punish companies for doing what many to most consumers feel was the "right" thing to do - add a surcharge that can easily be removed if the situation changed in the future vs. using a general increase as a new price anchor.

aiauthoritydev 9mo ago
You are right but the current admin arm twisted folks from showing that kind of line item.

aiauthoritydev 9mo ago

It is more complicated than that. Seller sold forward contracts to recoup tariffs at a lower price and passed on the benefits to the consumers already. E.g. For every $1 seller paid as tariffs, seller sold a contract to someone for $0.25 saying if government ever refunds the buyer of the contract can keep it. The $0.25 already passed to consumers as benefits. > Seller gets to keep the returned tax money as pure profit (no refund to customer) Not to the specific customer but this benefits will now get passed to future customers as prices will be lowered than usual (lower than pre-tariff prices) due to competition. Note that consumers who paid more were not necessarily paying the tariffs. Stores like Costco, Walmart increased prices across the board and socialized the impact of tariffs. Even if there was some mechanism to return tariff money to consumer, there is no way you could return it to someone who paid higher due to this socialized nature of price increase.

zaik 9mo ago
Guess who took the other side of those forward contracts: https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-refunds/ https://www.wired.com/story/cantor-fitzgerald-trump-tariff-r...

yalogin 9mo ago

It’s worse. Sellers raised prices citing tariffs. Not only does the seller get a one time bonus, the prices are now permanently raised as we all know prices are never coming down

xnx 9mo ago
The willingness of the customer to buy from competitors is the only thing that ever effects prices.

aaronrobinson 9mo ago

5) US Gov uses a different law 6) Go to step 1

Betelbuddy 9mo ago

>> 1) US customer pays huge import tax on imported goods in the form of higher prices. Not according to the current administration: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CODFD3j623E https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CODFD3j623E According to them, China and others are paying the tariffs, so any refunds clearly have to go to China...

Betelbuddy 9mo ago
You are downvoting the messenger. In a way...its an IQ test... "Trump says China is paying for his tariffs" - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-says-china-paying-his-tariffs-he-s-n1038751 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-tru... "Trump Incorrectly Has Insisted ‘China’s Paying the Tariffs’" - https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000006661985/trump-china-tariffs.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000006661985/tr... "Fact check: Trump and Vance keep falsely describing how tariffs work" - https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/fact-check-trump-vance-tariffs https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/fact-check-trump...

DivingForGold 9mo ago

Trump responds that it will be litigated, like 5 years worth . . .

gdilla 9mo ago

yes, because the US elected a clown, and this is the clown show.