MPF, HMF and the Customs Fees Nobody Quotes You

Duty is the number everyone models. The fees are the number that shows up on the broker's invoice three weeks after the container lands and nobody budgeted for. Individually they are small; on a first order of a few thousand pieces they can exceed 4% of entered value, which is more than most brands' contingency line. This page prices every one of them, and sits inside our guide to landed cost for apparel imports, which assembles the whole stack.

What CBP actually charges on an apparel entry, beyond duty

Two charges on a US import entry are federal user fees rather than duty: the Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF) and the Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF). Both are collected by CBP at entry summary, both are assessed on entered value, and neither depends on your HTS code or your country of origin — which makes them the only predictable part of the 2026 cost stack.

Everything else on the broker's invoice is a commercial charge from a private party: the broker's entry fee, the ISF filing fee, your bond premium, exam charges passed through by the terminal, and any pre-shipment inspection. Those are negotiable. The government fees are not.

Merchandise Processing Fee: the 0.3464% rate and the FY2026 and FY2027 caps

MPF is charged at 0.3464% of entered value, a rate unchanged since 2011. What moves is the per-entry floor and ceiling, which CBP adjusts for inflation each fiscal year under the COBRA user-fee schedule.

The table below shows MPF limits for the current and next US federal fiscal year. FY2027 figures take effect 1 October 2026.

Informal entries pay a flat fee instead of the ad valorem MPF: for FY2027, $2.77 automated, $8.30 manual, and $12.45 where CBP prepares the entry. Dutiable mail is $7.61. Since the $800 de minimis exemption was withdrawn, those informal-entry lines apply to a lot of shipments that used to arrive fee-free.

Why the MPF cap makes MPF trivial on a container and punishing on a small shipment

The two limits create two very different worlds, and the arithmetic is worth committing to memory.

• The FY2026 ceiling binds at $651.50 ÷ 0.003464 = about $188,000 in entered value. Above that, MPF is a flat $651.50 no matter how large the entry. On a full container of apparel, MPF is a rounding error — on a $43,000 entry it is $148.95, roughly 0.35%, and on a $400,000 entry it is 0.16% and falling.
• The FY2026 floor binds below $33.58 ÷ 0.003464 = about $9,700 in entered value. Below that, you pay the minimum regardless. On a $3,000 sample-and-launch shipment, $33.58 is an effective rate of 1.12% — more than three times the headline rate.

For FY2027 those crossovers move to roughly $9,980 and $193,700. The practical consequence: MPF punishes fragmentation. Four separate $10,000 entries pay four minimums; one consolidated $40,000 entry pays one ad valorem charge of $138.56. If you are drip-feeding small shipments to smooth cash flow, MPF is one of several fees quietly charging you for the privilege.

Harbor Maintenance Fee: 0.125% of cargo value, ocean only, no ceiling

HMF is governed by 19 CFR 24.24. It is 0.125% of cargo value, with no minimum and no maximum, and it applies only to cargo arriving by vessel. Air, truck and rail imports pay none. Exemptions in the regulation include cargo moving in bond for direct foreign export, US government cargo, certain Alaska, Hawaii and possessions movements, ferries, and bunker or ship's stores.

The absence of a cap is the part that surprises people. Because MPF stops at $651.50 in FY2026 and HMF does not stop at all, HMF becomes the larger of the two fees above about $521,200 in entered value ($651.50 ÷ 0.00125). In FY2027 that crossover moves to roughly $536,700. A brand importing two or three high-value containers per entry will pay more in harbour fee than in processing fee — the opposite of what most cost models assume.

Broker, bond, ISF and exam charges: the non-government side of the fee stack

The table below shows typical 2026 commercial charges on a US apparel import. These are market rates, not government tariffs, and they vary by broker, port and volume.

Two of these deserve attention when duty rates rise. Bond amount is set at 10% of duties, taxes and fees paid in the previous twelve months, rounded up to the nearest $10,000 with a $50,000 floor, so the 2025–26 tariff layers pushed many apparel importers' bonds into insufficiency and triggered port holds. That mechanics is covered in continuous versus single-transaction customs bonds. Exam charges are unbudgetable individually but statistically predictable: if you import regularly, put an allowance in the model rather than treating every exam as a surprise.

ISF "10+2": the ten importer elements, the 24-hour deadline and the $5,000 penalty

Importer Security Filing applies to cargo arriving in the US by vessel. The importer supplies ten data elements and the carrier supplies two.

The ten importer elements are: manufacturer or supplier; seller; buyer; ship-to party; container stuffing location; consolidator or stuffer; importer of record number; consignee number; country of origin; and HTSUS number. The two carrier elements are the vessel stow plan and container status messages.

Three operational facts matter more than the list:

1. The deadline is 24 hours before lading at the foreign port, not 24 hours before US arrival. In a Chittagong or Nhava Sheva program that means the data has to be right while the container is still at origin, which in turn means your HTS classification has to be settled before the box is stuffed. See how apparel HTS codes are determined.
2. The penalty is liquidated damages of $5,000 per violation — for a late filing, an inaccurate filing, or no filing at all. More than one element can be wrong on one filing.
3. The importer of record remains liable even when a broker or forwarder files on your behalf. Outsourcing the keystrokes does not outsource the liability, which is the same principle that runs through importer-of-record responsibilities.

Beyond the money, a bad ISF history raises your exam rate, and exams cost time as well as fees.

Worked example: every fee on a 10,000-piece container entry

Basis: 10,000 cotton jersey tees, HTS 6109.10.00, Bangladesh origin, entered value $43,000, one 40ft HC, ocean into Savannah, August 2026. Duty is shown for scale only — 16.5% MFN plus the 10% Section 301 forced-labor rate effective 24 July 2026. Verify all rates against the current HTSUS.

Total fees come to 1.23% of entered value and about 4.6% of the duty bill. On a container, fees are real but not decisive; duty is the number that decides your margin, which is why current US duty rates on clothing matters more than this page does.

Worked comparison: the same fee stack on a $6,000 air shipment

Now run a small urgent replenishment: 1,400 tees flown in, entered value $6,000, arriving by air.

That is 4.73% of entered value — nearly four times the rate on the container, before a dollar of air freight is counted. The MPF minimum alone is running at an effective 0.56% instead of the headline 0.3464%. Small, frequent, urgent shipments are expensive in every line of the model at once, which is the argument made in full in ocean versus air freight per garment. Every term used above is defined in the Yarnstick glossary of customs terms.

Frequently asked questions