Duty recovery looks backwards at entries that are already closed. This looks forwards. Every line of the declaration is read against the tariff before it goes to CBSA, so the error never becomes a refund claim in the first place.
Brokerage software takes what the invoice says and turns it into a declaration. It is very good at that. What it does not do is ask whether the answer is right, because it has no independent opinion about the tariff. The classification came from somewhere upstream, the rate follows from the classification, and nothing in the chain re-reads either one.
So the entry goes out. The importer of record signs for it, and under the Customs Act carries the responsibility for what it says. If the rate was wrong the money is gone quietly, and if it was wrong the other way it comes back later as interest and a penalty.
When CBSA does look, it finds a great deal. Of the verifications it closed in its published trade compliance programme, 466 of 665 were in error. Those are targeted verifications, not a random sample, and the point is not the rate. The point is that 30.7 million commercial releases entered Canada last year and CBSA verified 665 of them.
| Check | The question |
|---|---|
| CLS | Is the tariff item consistent with the goods as described, and with the ones it competes with? |
| UOM | Is the unit of measure the one the tariff requires for that item? |
| TRT | Is the tariff treatment available for that origin, and is it supported by what was supplied? |
| RATE | Is the rate the one the tariff carries for that item, in the edition in force on the date of the entry? |
| MATH | Does the duty actually equal the rate applied to the value for duty? |
| VAL | Is the value for duty internally consistent with the invoice and the terms of sale? |
| REL | If relief or a special authority was claimed, was it available and is the code right? |
| GST | Is the tax computed on the right base, and is the item taxable at all? |
| SIMA | Do the goods fall under a measure in force, a surtax, or a safeguard? |
Every answer names the chapter or the memorandum it came from and the edition of the tariff it was read in. Nothing is asserted from memory.
A checker that always produces an answer is not checking anything. Ours refuses.
If origin is claimed and the certification is not in the documents, the report does not quietly accept it and it does not quietly reject it. It records an open item, names the document that would close it and who it has to come from, and puts the amount at risk beside it.
That matters commercially, not just morally. An unproven origin claim is duty at the full rate if CBSA asks, and it is the line most likely to be sitting on real money. The refusals are usually where the money is.
Norquin does not hold a customs broker licence and does not present itself as one. Where an entry has to be filed, corrected or adjusted with the Canada Border Services Agency, that step is made by YES Express, a licensed Canadian customs broker, under its own licence.
Most importers meet us the other way round: we look back at entries that were already filed, find what was overpaid, and recover it. The forward check is what people ask for after they have seen what the look back turned up. That is the door.