Merchandise Processing Fee 2027: Same 0.3464% Rate, a $34.58 MPF Minimum From October 1, 2026

Key takeaways

• The rate did not move. The floor did. CBP's FY2027 user fee notice, published July 31, 2026, says it in a footnote: "Only the limitation is increasing; the ad valorem rate of 0.3464 percent remains the same." The merchandise processing fee (MPF) minimum goes from $33.58 to $34.58 and the maximum from $651.50 to $670.86.
• The date is October 1, 2026. The notice's own words: "The adjusted amounts of customs COBRA user fees and their corresponding limitations set forth in this notice for Fiscal Year 2027 are required as of October 1, 2026." Until then, the fiscal 2026 figures are the operative ones.
• The $9,983 line decides whether this costs you anything — unless you're up against the ceiling. Divide the new minimum by the rate — $34.58 ÷ 0.3464% — and you get roughly $9,983. On a formal entry below that, the percentage calculation lands under the floor, so you pay the floor. Entries below about $9,694 absorb the entire $1.00; between $9,694 and $9,983 the increase shrinks toward zero. Entries between roughly $9,983 and $188,077 pay the rate, and the rate didn't change: for them the increase is zero. Above that the old ceiling starts letting go, up to $19.36 more at the top.
• Small shipments pay a much higher effective rate than the headline number. A $1,000 formal entry computes to $3.46 in fee and gets billed $34.58 — about 3.46% of value, ten times the nominal 0.3464%. That is not new in fiscal 2027, but it is the reason the floor is the number that matters to small importers.
• Under about $2,500 a shipment may clear informally — and then the arithmetic switches tables entirely. 19 CFR 24.23(b)(1)(i)(A) confines the ad valorem fee to merchandise "formally entered or released." Informal entries are priced as flat amounts instead — $2.77 / $8.30 / $12.45 in fiscal 2027, depending on how the entry is prepared.
• The MPF is a user fee, and its carve-outs are its own. 24.23(c)(3) states that these fees "will not apply to goods originating within the meaning of General Note 11, HTSUS" — that is, goods qualifying under the USMCA — with mixed shipments split so the fees "apply only to those goods which are not originating goods." A valid origin claim, not the duty rate, is what moves this line to zero.

The short answer: what the merchandise processing fee is in 2027

For fiscal year 2027 — which for customs purposes starts October 1, 2026 — the merchandise processing fee on a formal entry is 0.3464% of value, with a minimum of $34.58 and a maximum of $670.86. The rate is identical to fiscal 2026. The minimum and maximum are each about 3% higher.

Until October 1, 2026 the fiscal 2026 numbers govern: the same 0.3464%, with a $33.58 minimum and a $651.50 maximum. Both sets are correct; they answer different fiscal years. As of this brief's publication date, August 4, 2026, the fiscal 2026 figures are the ones on your entries, and the fiscal 2027 figures are the ones to budget.

If your shipment moves as an informal entry rather than a formal one, none of those percentages apply to it. Informal entries are priced as flat amounts under 24.23(b)(2): in fiscal 2027, $2.77 if automated and not prepared by CBP, $8.30 if manual and not prepared by CBP, and $12.45 if manual and prepared by CBP.

That is the whole answer. The rest of this brief is about the part that isn't in the tables — which of those numbers is actually yours, and why an increase that leaves the rate untouched still lands squarely on the smallest shipments.

What changed on July 31, 2026

On July 31, 2026, CBP published CBP Dec. 26-14 in the Federal Register (91 FR 48398, document 2026-15530), adjusting the customs COBRA user fees for inflation for fiscal year 2027. The notice states a CPI-U increase of 2.84% for the period it measures, and applies a cumulative adjustment factor of 38.322% against the fiscal 2014 base amounts. It is an annual exercise: the equivalent notice for fiscal 2026, CBP Dec. 25-10, was published on July 23, 2025 and took effect that October 1.

The operative sentence is short and unusually clean for a fee notice:

"The adjusted amounts of customs COBRA user fees and their corresponding limitations set forth in this notice for Fiscal Year 2027 are required as of October 1, 2026."

Here is what moved, against the fiscal 2026 baseline:

The rate line is the one to sit with, because CBP flagged it themselves. A footnote attached to the merchandise processing fee entries reads:

"Only the limitation is increasing; the ad valorem rate of 0.3464 percent remains the same. See 82 FR 50523 (November 1, 2017)."

So the notice is not raising the price of importing by 2.84%. It is raising a floor and a ceiling by about 3% each and leaving everything between them exactly where it was. Which sounds like a smaller change than it is — for one specific group of importers, and not the group you'd guess.

The $9,983 line: who actually pays this increase

A percentage with a floor under it stops behaving like a percentage below a certain value. That value is the floor divided by the rate.

$34.58 ÷ 0.3464% ≈ $9,983.

Below roughly $9,983 of entered value, the ad valorem calculation produces a number smaller than the minimum, so the minimum is what gets charged. Above it, the calculation takes over. And because the rate is unchanged for fiscal 2027, the entire increase concentrates on the entries sitting under that line.

Two details in that table are worth reading twice.

The floor's reach widens. In fiscal 2026 the crossover sat at about $9,694 ($33.58 ÷ 0.3464%). In fiscal 2027 it sits at about $9,983. Roughly $289 of shipment value moves into the flat-minimum zone — entries in that band were paying a calculated fee and will now be paying a floor. The same thing happens at the top, in the opposite direction: the ceiling starts biting at about $193,666 instead of about $188,077, so entries between those figures move from paying the cap to paying the rate.

The middle is untouched. An importer bringing in $60,000 formal entries pays 0.3464% in fiscal 2027, the same as in fiscal 2026 — $207.84 either way. If a summary tells that importer their processing fee is going up on October 1, the summary is describing somebody else's shipment.

The effective rate on small entries

The floor is why the merchandise processing fee is regressive by value. On a formal entry, in fiscal 2027:

A $1,000 formal entry pays about ten times the nominal rate. That is the answer to a question a lot of small importers ask their broker in some form — why is the processing fee so large relative to my order? — and it has nothing to do with the goods. It is arithmetic on a floor.

One practical consequence follows from the floor being a limit on the fee for an entry rather than a charge per item: shipments that arrive on separate entries each meet that floor separately. Ten $1,000 entries meet it ten times ($345.80); the same $10,000 on one entry lands right at the crossover. Whether your goods can move on one entry is a shipping and brokerage question, not one the fee table decides — but if you file a lot of small entries, the entry count is the variable with the most leverage in it, and it is worth putting to your broker as a question rather than assuming either way.

Under about $2,500, you're reading the wrong table

That whole calculation prices a formal entry, because that is what the regulation says. 19 CFR 24.23(b)(1)(i)(A):

"Except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section, merchandise that is formally entered or released is subject to the payment to CBP of an ad valorem fee of 0.3464 percent."

Formally entered or released. The percentage, the $34.58 floor, the $670.86 ceiling — that machinery attaches to formal entry. Informal entries are handled in (b)(2), and they are not a percentage of anything. They are three flat amounts, and which one applies turns on how the entry is prepared, not on what the goods are worth:

Note what does not stack on top of those. The $4.15 manual surcharge is a formal-entry item: 24.23(b)(1)(ii) applies it "in the case of any formal manual entry or release" and adds it to the ad valorem fee, not to the amounts above. And the $1.38 per waybill express consignment fee is charged to a different party — under 24.23(b)(4)(i), "each carrier or operator using an express consignment carrier facility or a centralized hub facility must pay" it, though it commonly reaches you as a line on their invoice.

The gap between the two tables is the single largest number in this brief. A $2,000 shipment that clears as a formal entry pays $34.58. The same shipment clearing informally, automated, pays $2.77. That is a factor of twelve, decided by a classification that 24.23 does not make.

So where is the line? Not in 24.23 — this section prices the outcome, it doesn't set the classification. In practice the dividing figure most importers deal with is $2,500, which is also the ceiling written into the postal informal entry process CBP created in 2026 (mail valued $2,500 or less). We took that process apart, including its bond and payment mechanics, in our brief on the end of de minimis — the procedure lives there, and this brief stays on the money.

Two things to check before you assume the cheaper column is yours:

1. Which entry type your goods actually take. Product-specific requirements can push a shipment to formal entry regardless of value. That is a question for your customs broker, and the answer is what selects your table.
2. Whether your business is eligible to file informal entry. Executive Order 14411 directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to prohibit a foreign importer of record from filing informal entry — which, for a US-formed company owned from abroad, is not the obvious question it looks like. We work through that definition in foreign importer of record: a US LLC answers only one of three tests. If that directive is implemented and it reaches you, the $2.77 column stops being available and your small shipments meet the $34.58 floor instead.

There is a third thing that changed the population of shipments in these tables without changing either table. 24.23(c)(1)(v) exempts "merchandise released under 19 U.S.C. 1321" — the de minimis provision. Section 1321 was not deleted; the $800 de minimis route under 1321(a)(2)(C) was suspended, which is a different thing from repealing the statute the exemption points at. But the practical effect on this fee is direct: parcels that used to arrive through that door and never touch an entry now take an entry, and an entry is where 24.23 starts charging. The sequence and dates are in the de minimis brief linked above.

One date belongs on a fiscal 2027 budget specifically. The suspension described above is administrative, but Congress also legislated the door shut, and it did so on a clock that lands inside these fee tables. Effective July 1, 2027, Pub. L. 119–21 § 70531(b) amends section 1321 by striking the text running from "of this Act, or" through "subdivision (2); and" — the span that contains subparagraph (a)(2)(C), which is the "$800 in any other case" clause itself. Fiscal 2027 runs from October 1, 2026 to September 30, 2027, so the schedule you are budgeting against straddles the point where the exemption stops being a suspended route and becomes a deleted one.

Is the merchandise processing fee a tariff? No — and that changes where the exemptions are

It is a user fee. CBP's notice calls these "customs COBRA user fees," they are adjusted annually for inflation by notice rather than by trade action, and 24.23 states one ad valorem figure rather than a schedule that varies by product. A tariff classification argument and a merchandise processing fee argument are different arguments, run under different provisions.

Which means the exemptions do not travel together. The carve-outs for this fee live in 24.23(c), and the one most likely to apply to a founder shipping into the US is (c)(3):

"The ad valorem, surcharge, and specific fees provided for under paragraphs (b)(1) and (2) of this section will not apply to goods originating within the meaning of General Note 11, HTSUS (see also 19 U.S.C. 4531), or to goods that qualify for preferential tariff treatment under § 182.82 of this chapter (see also Annex 6-A of the USMCA), that are entered for consumption, or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption, on or after July 1, 2020."

Read the reach of that sentence carefully, because it is wider than most write-ups suggest. It exempts the ad valorem fee, the surcharge, and the specific fees provided for under paragraphs (b)(1) and (2) — paragraph (b)(2) being the informal entry amounts. For qualifying originating goods, the $34.58 floor and the $2.77 informal fee are both off the table.

And it splits mixed shipments rather than treating them as one thing:

"the ad valorem, surcharge, and specific fees will apply only to those goods which are not originating goods or are goods that do not qualify for preferential tariff treatment"

So a container carrying both originating and non-originating goods gets the fee computed on the non-originating portion. The thing that produces this outcome is the origin claim, correctly made — not the fact that the goods happened to be produced in a USMCA country.

One honesty note on the carve-outs: (c)(1)(v) and (c)(3) are two items from a longer list. Paragraph (c) contains more than the two we quote here, and we are not attempting to summarize the rest of it. Read 24.23(c) against your own goods rather than assuming that being duty-free under some other provision puts you outside this fee — the fee attaches to entry, and (c) is a list of specific carve-outs rather than a general rule that no duty means no fee.

What to do before October 1, 2026

1. Date-stamp any fee figure you find, including this one. These amounts are adjusted annually, so a figure without a fiscal year attached is missing the part that makes it usable. Ask two questions of any number you're about to plug into a spreadsheet: which fiscal year is this, and has October 1 passed? Numbers published in 2025 described fiscal 2026 accurately when they were written, and will keep describing it accurately after they stop being the operative figures.
2. Recompute landed cost on anything under about $9,983 first. That is where the increase actually lands, and where the fee is a flat $34.58 regardless of what the rate says.
3. Ask your broker which entry type your shipments take. The twelve-fold gap between $34.58 and $2.77 is decided by that classification, and 24.23 does not make it. Your broker's own charges are separate from these fees and are not set by this notice.
4. If your goods originate under the USMCA, treat the origin claim as the cost control it is. (c)(3) is what zeroes these fees, and it turns on originating status established through a correctly made claim — not on where the goods happen to have been made.
5. Look at your entry count, not just your volume. If the same annual volume arrives as many small entries, the floor is charged many times. That is a shipping-structure question worth asking before it is a customs question.
6. Check whether the informal column is available to your business. See the foreign importer of record brief linked above; if the answer is no, your small-shipment economics are built on the $34.58 floor instead of the $2.77 fee.

While you are in the notice, one detail is worth knowing because it tells you where to look for authority. A general notice cannot amend the Code of Federal Regulations, but this one flags an error in the regulation it is pricing. In its own footnotes, CBP records that "Appendix B of part 24 inadvertently included a reference to paragraph (b)(1)(i)(B)(2) of section 24.23. However, the reference should have been to paragraph (b)(4)(ii)," and states that "CBP intends to publish a future document in the Federal Register to make several technical corrections to part 24 of title 19 of the CFR."

We checked whether that was new. It isn't: the fiscal 2026 notice published a year earlier carries the same four footnotes and the same promise of a future correcting document. So the agency has now told readers twice, in consecutive annual fee notices, that parts of its published appendix point at the wrong paragraphs — and the correcting document has not appeared. That is not a reason to distrust the amounts, which are stated in the notice itself. It is a reason to cite the Federal Register notice for the fiscal year when a figure matters, rather than the appendix.

The address angle: this fee is charged to whoever is named on the entry

The merchandise processing fee is not charged to a shipment. It is charged on an entry, and an entry names an importer of record — the party legally responsible for the declaration and the money. So "who pays the $34.58" has the same answer as "who is named on the entry," and that is a decision rather than a default. It is also the answer to the reverse question: money that comes back from CBP travels to the party on the entry, which we worked through in who gets the tariff refund.

Be exact about what an address does here, because the temptation to oversell it is obvious. A business address does not change this fee, your entry type, or your classification. No address product does. Nothing in 24.23 turns on where your mail goes.

What a stable US business address does is narrower and genuinely useful once entries start attaching to your company: it keeps the records that customs, your broker, your bank, and your state filing hold in agreement with one another, and it keeps you reachable when one of them needs an answer. Importers who run into avoidable friction are rarely the ones with the wrong answer on file. They are the ones with three different answers on file, at three different addresses, none of which anyone is reading.

On the US side, our partner save office runs that service — Auteur doesn't operate the US service directly. If your entries, your bank record, and your state filing currently point at a home address or at three different ones, you can set up a US business address through our partner.

FAQ

Is the merchandise processing fee a tariff? No — it is a customs user fee. CBP adjusts it annually for inflation and publishes the amounts in a Federal Register notice, which is what happened on July 31, 2026 for fiscal 2027. Tariffs are set through the tariff schedule and trade actions; this fee is stated in 19 CFR 24.23 as a single ad valorem figure (0.3464%) with a floor and a ceiling, plus flat amounts for informal entry. The practical consequence is that the two do not exempt together: the carve-outs for this fee are in 24.23(c), and the one most likely to reach a founder is (c)(3), which states the fees "will not apply to goods originating within the meaning of General Note 11, HTSUS" — goods qualifying under the USMCA — with mixed shipments split so the fees "apply only to those goods which are not originating goods."

What is the current merchandise processing fee? That depends on the date you're asking, and the answer flips on October 1, 2026. Through September 30, 2026 (fiscal 2026): 0.3464%, minimum $33.58, maximum $651.50. From October 1, 2026 (fiscal 2027): the same 0.3464%, minimum $34.58, maximum $670.86. The notice setting the fiscal 2027 amounts states they "are required as of October 1, 2026." Because these figures change annually, a fee number without a fiscal year attached is incomplete rather than wrong — check which year the source is describing before you use it.

What are the MPF minimum and maximum for 2027? For fiscal year 2027, beginning October 1, 2026: minimum $34.58, maximum $670.86. Those are up from $33.58 and $651.50, increases of about 3% each, while the 0.3464% rate is unchanged. In value terms: a formal entry below roughly $9,983 pays the minimum, because the percentage calculation lands under the floor; a formal entry above roughly $193,666 pays the maximum. Between those two figures you pay the rate, which did not change — though entries between roughly $188,077 and $193,666 were capped at $651.50 in fiscal 2026 and now pay the rate instead, so they see part of the ceiling increase.

What is the informal entry fee for fiscal 2027? Under 24.23(b)(2), informal entries are charged flat amounts rather than a percentage: $2.77 automated and not prepared by CBP, $8.30 manual and not prepared by CBP, and $12.45 manual and prepared by CBP. Two adjacent figures are often quoted alongside these, and neither adds to them: the $4.15 surcharge attaches to formal manual entry or release under 24.23(b)(1)(ii), and the $1.38 per waybill express consignment fee is payable by the carrier or operator under 24.23(b)(4)(i). These are the fiscal 2027 figures, required as of October 1, 2026; the fiscal 2026 equivalents are $2.69, $8.06, $12.09, $4.03 and $1.34.

Why am I being charged a processing fee on a small shipment? Almost certainly because of the minimum. On a formal entry the fee is computed at 0.3464% of value, but it cannot fall below the floor — $34.58 in fiscal 2027. A $1,000 entry computes to $3.46 and gets billed $34.58, which works out to about 3.46% of value, roughly ten times the nominal rate. Nothing about your goods causes that; it is what a floor does to small numbers. If your shipments are consistently small, the two questions with real leverage are whether they can clear as informal entries (flat amounts, far lower) and whether they can arrive on fewer entries, since the floor is met once per entry.

How do I know if I need to pay a customs fee? Start with three questions rather than a dollar figure. First, which entry type? The ad valorem fee and its $34.58 floor attach to merchandise "formally entered or released"; informal entries are priced separately as flat amounts, and the figure most importers work from for that split is $2,500 — but the classification is decided elsewhere in the regulations, so confirm it with your broker rather than reading it off the value. Second, do your goods qualify under an origin claim? 24.23(c)(3) removes the ad valorem fee, the surcharge and the informal entry amounts for qualifying originating goods, and splits mixed shipments so only the non-originating portion is charged. Third, does another carve-out in 24.23(c) reach you? That paragraph has more items than the two quoted in this brief. None of this is a substitute for having your broker price your specific entry.

Bottom line

CBP's July 31, 2026 notice raises the merchandise processing fee minimum to $34.58 and the maximum to $670.86, required as of October 1, 2026, and leaves the 0.3464% rate exactly where it was — a point the agency makes in its own footnote rather than leaving to interpretation.

That combination produces a distribution rather than an across-the-board increase. Formal entries below roughly $9,983 pay the floor and therefore absorb the full $1.00; entries between roughly $9,983 and $188,077 pay a rate that did not change and see nothing; entries above the top crossover pay $19.36 more at the ceiling. The importers who feel this are the ones sending small formal entries, and they were already paying an effective rate far above the headline number — about 3.46% on a $1,000 entry — because that is what a floor does.

So the useful question isn't what is the merchandise processing fee. It is which of these tables is mine, and how many times a year do I meet the floor. The answers sit in two places that have nothing to do with the fee schedule: the entry type your goods take, and whether your origin claim is one 24.23(c)(3) recognizes.

This is general information about a US customs user fee adjustment, current as of August 4, 2026 — not legal, tax, or customs advice. Fee amounts are adjusted annually and the classification of your shipments depends on facts specific to your goods; confirm your own position with US Customs and Border Protection or a licensed customs broker before relying on it.