"Importer of record: what you own when your name is on the entry"

The importer of record is the party legally responsible for a customs entry. That party declares what the goods are, what they are worth, and where they were made, pays the duty, and keeps the records.

The responsibility does not follow the goods and it does not follow the money. It follows the name on the entry. If a supplier arranged the shipment, chose the classification and filed everything on your behalf, you are still the party the customs authority will contact.

What the role actually obligates you to

Four declarations, and one duty that outlives all of them.

Classification. The tariff code assigned to the goods. This decides the duty rate, whether trade remedies apply, and which rules of origin you must satisfy.

Valuation. The declared customs value, and the correct treatment of items such as assists, royalties, tooling paid separately, and freight, depending on the valuation method used.

Origin. Where the goods were made, determined by the applicable rules rather than by where they shipped from.

Marking. Whether the goods carry the country of origin marking your market requires, in the required form and position.

Recordkeeping. In the United States, records supporting an entry must be kept for five years from the date of entry. Other systems have their own periods. The obligation continues long after the goods have been sold.

Alongside these sits a standard of conduct. US law requires the importer to use reasonable care in making these declarations. Reasonable care means you took sensible steps: you asked a qualified person, you kept the analysis, you did not guess. Being wrong after taking reasonable care is a different situation from being wrong because nobody looked.

Why "my supplier handles everything" is a problem

A supplier who offers to deliver duty paid is arranging for an entry to be filed. Someone is named as importer of record on it.

Three situations arise, and only one of them is safe.

The supplier uses their own importer of record arrangement. Your goods enter under someone else's name. You have no visibility of the classification, the declared value, or the origin claimed. If any of it is wrong, the entry is not yours to correct, and the party who filed may not exist in a year.

You are named as importer of record without being involved. This happens more often than people expect. An entry is filed in your company's name using information you never reviewed. You carry the liability for declarations you never saw.

You are importer of record and you control the filing. You appoint the broker, you review the classification, you hold the records. This is the only version where the responsibility and the control sit in the same place.

Ask directly, before the first shipment: who will be named as importer of record, and who chooses the classification. If the answer is vague, that is the answer.

What this means for delivered terms

Buying on a delivered-duty-paid basis is convenient and it is where most of the confusion sits.

The commercial term allocates cost between you and the seller. It does not decide who is legally the importer. A seller who prices duty into the invoice may or may not be the party filing the entry, and in many markets a foreign seller cannot be importer of record without a local presence, a bond, or a resident agent.

If you buy delivered, ask for the entry number and a copy of the entry summary after each shipment. If you are named on it, you need to be reviewing it. If you are not, you need to understand who is and what happens if that arrangement disappears.

The obligations people discover late

Bonds. Most systems require financial security. In the United States a continuous bond covers a year of entries and is sized against duties paid. Goods subject to additional duties can require a much larger bond, and bond capacity is checked before shipments move, not afterwards.

Retroactive liability. Some duties are assessed finally long after entry. A bill can arrive two or three years later for goods already sold. The importer of record pays it.

Detentions. When a shipment is held, the importer of record responds, produces documents, and pays the storage costs while it is resolved.

Penalties. Where a declaration is wrong, penalties are assessed against the importer of record and scale with the level of fault.

The questions to settle before the first container

1. Who is named as importer of record, in writing?
2. Who selects and confirms the tariff classification?
3. Which broker files, and do we have a direct relationship with them?
4. Where will the entry records be kept, and by whom, for the full retention period?
5. What is our bond position, and does it cover the duty we expect to pay?
6. If duty is assessed retroactively, who pays?
7. If the goods are detained, who responds and who pays the storage?

Settle these on paper. Every one of them becomes contentious at exactly the moment it matters.

When it makes sense not to be importer of record

There are legitimate reasons to have someone else carry it.

You may have no legal presence in the destination market. You may be selling to a distributor who imports in their own name, which is the normal arrangement. You may be sending small quantities where the administrative burden outweighs the control.

What matters is that it is a decision, made with knowledge of who is carrying the responsibility and whether they can carry it. Drifting into an arrangement because a supplier offered to handle everything is not a decision.

The short version

The name on the entry carries the classification, the valuation, the origin claim, the marking, the records and the penalties. Convenience arrangements move the work without moving the liability.

Find out whose name is on your entries. If it is yours, start reviewing them.

Verified August 2026. Next review February 2027. Requirements differ by country. Confirm your position with a licensed customs broker in each market you import into.