Industry To Fight Extension Of Merchandise Processing Fee
A 300-member coalition of shippers, customs brokers and freight forwarders has vowed to defeat an action taken by the Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services to extend the Merchandise Processing Fee for seven years and to use the funds to pay for what the coalition calls “unrelated social programs.”
''''The processing fee is scheduled to sunset in the year 2003 and is “solely earmarked for Customs commercial processing and modernization, period,” said Robin Lanier, chairman of the Coalition for Customs Automation Funding. “It cannot be used for funding completely unrelated social programs or anything else for that matter.”
''''The MPF generates almost $1 billion per year, and by 2001, the trade community will have paid nearly $7.2 billion, which is “enough to pay for a new import/export system six times over,” Lanier said. “Nevertheless, a new system has yet to be built. The trade community is outraged that the Senate is taking the merchandise processing tax and misappropriating it to completely unrelated programs, while at the same time providing zero funding for Customs modernization.”
''''The House Appropriations subcommittee approved $234 million for development of Customs' Automated Commercial Environment earlier this month. The full House Appropriations Committee is slated to take up the bill today.