INSIGHT

The Tariff Ruling’s Unfinished Business: What Your Company Needs to Know Now 

Rono Ghosh, Andre Shevchuck • March 13, 2026

Services: Transfer Pricing, International Tax, Corporate Tax

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Our February 20 article on the Supreme Court’s IEEPA tariff ruling gave you an initial read on what changed, what didn’t, and how specific industries should be reassessing their positions. A closer look at the full opinion reveals key steps and developments to watch, including the practical mechanics of pursuing a refund, and a state and local tax angle that most coverage has overlooked entirely. 

What to Watch for in the Administrative and Legislative Response 

If you’re an importer, a CFO modeling updated margin assumptions, or a tax or finance leader trying to figure out what comes next, this is what to watch for in the administrative and legislative response: 

Alternative Tariff Authority 

The administration has signaled its intent to reimpose tariffs under statutory frameworks that expressly delegate tariff authority — principally Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, both of which remain in effect and are unaffected by this ruling. Watch for executive action under those authorities and be prepared to update your tariff exposure analysis if new duties are announced. 

Refund Guidance from CBP and Treasury 

Customs and Border Protection and the Treasury Department will need to issue guidance on the mechanics of refund claims — timelines, procedures, and required documentation. That guidance hasn’t been issued yet. When it is, acting quickly will matter. Filing deadlines in customs refund processes tend to be strict, and being unprepared when the window opens is a costly mistake. 

Congressional Response 

Congress could pass legislation expressly delegating broader tariff authority to the executive, effectively overriding the Court’s statutory interpretation. Whether that happens — and on what timeline — is a political question, but businesses operating under the assumption that the current legal landscape is permanent should be accounting for that uncertainty in their planning. 

Ongoing Litigation 

The ruling remanded one of the consolidated cases with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction, while affirming judgment in the other. Additional cases working through the federal courts — including class actions filed by importers seeking to recover what they paid — remain active. The outcomes of those cases may shape both the scope of recoverable duties and the timeline for any payouts. 

How the Major Questions Doctrine Shapes What Comes Next 

The majority also applied the major questions doctrine — the same framework the Court used in West Virginia v. EPA in 2022. Under that doctrine, executive actions of major economic and political significance require clear congressional authorization, not general grants of regulatory authority that have been stretched to cover the action in question. 

The breadth of the IEEPA tariffs — their scope, their duration, their capacity to reshape supply chains and raise hundreds of billions in revenue — put them squarely in that category. The statutory authority wasn’t there. That was enough. 

For businesses managing import costs and supply chain decisions, this matters beyond the immediate ruling. The major questions doctrine is now the analytical lens courts will apply to future executive tariff actions. “We invoked an emergency statute” is no longer sufficient. The statutory basis will need to do real work, and that has real implications for how durable any reimposed tariffs will prove to be. 

The Refund Process: What Getting Organized Looks Like 

Our initial piece flagged that the refund question remains open — the majority didn’t resolve it directly, and the process is expected to be complex. That’s still true. But businesses that want to be positioned to pursue claims need to start their documentation work now, not after formal guidance is issued. 

Start With Your Customs Broker 

Your customs broker is your first call. Refund claims on duties paid under IEEPA-based proclamations will flow through the customs entry process, and your broker holds the entry records that form the foundation of any claim. That relationship — and the documentation your broker maintains — is central to everything that follows. 

Beyond engaging your broker, building a credible claim file means assembling: 

• Complete entry documentation: CBP Form 7501 or equivalent, commercial invoices, packing lists, and bills of lading for each affected shipment. These records establish what was imported, when, under what tariff classification, and what duty was paid. 
• Broker invoices and duty payment records: Documentation confirming the amount of duty paid and the specific proclamation authority under which it was assessed. Separating IEEPA-based payments from Section 232 or Section 301 payments is a prerequisite for any claim, and that distinction needs to be clearly documented. 
• Internal accounting records: General ledger entries, accounts payable records, and any capitalized tariff costs. These connect your customs records to your financial statements and may be relevant for both the refund claim and any associated accounting adjustments. 
• Purchase orders and supplier contracts: Particularly important if tariff costs were embedded in your pricing arrangements, which leads directly to the next issue. 

Navigating the Pass-Through Question 

If your company absorbed IEEPA tariff costs directly – paying them to Customs without passing them through to customers – the path to a refund claim is relatively straightforward in structure, even if the process itself is not. 

If you embedded tariff costs in the prices you charged customers, the picture gets more complicated. Whether you have a legal obligation to pass refunds downstream depends on the specific language in your contracts. Some agreements include tariff escalation and de-escalation provisions that would trigger a pricing adjustment. Others are silent. Reviewing those agreements proactively – before refunds materialize – puts you in a much stronger position than managing it reactively once the money arrives. 

This is also a financial reporting question. For publicly traded companies with tariff-related disclosures, the potential for refunds may have accounting implications worth discussing with your audit team now. If tariff costs were recognized in prior periods under an assumption of permanence, those accounting treatments may warrant a fresh look as the refund landscape clarifies. 

The State and Local Tax Angle Many Companies Are Missing 

This is the dimension that most tariff coverage hasn’t addressed. And for businesses operating in states with sales taxes, it could create an unexpected compliance obligation. 

When IEEPA tariff costs were passed through to customers, those costs were typically embedded in the price of goods sold. In sales-tax states, the taxable price of a transaction generally includes any duty or tariff cost incorporated into the sale price. That means your company may have collected and remitted sales tax on a price that reflected IEEPA tariff costs. 

If those tariff costs are refunded, a straightforward question follows: does the refund create an obligation to adjust the sales tax that was collected? And if so, who bears that adjustment — the seller who remitted the tax, or the customer who bore the cost? 

The answer isn’t settled. How individual states will respond is genuinely uncertain, and state revenue departments vary significantly in how they approach situations where the taxable base of a prior transaction changes after the fact. Some may require amended returns. Others may take the position that the original transaction was taxed correctly at the time, with no adjustment required for subsequent refunds. 

If your company operates across multiple states with significant sales tax obligations and you passed IEEPA tariff costs to customers, your SALT team should be mapping your exposure now — before refund guidance is issued and before state revenue departments start raising questions. The complexity of managing this retroactively, after returns have been filed and customers have received refunds, is significantly higher than getting ahead of it. 

Where to Start Right Now 

Across all of these issues, the common thread is the same: the companies that move methodically through the analysis now will be in a far stronger position than those waiting for the full picture to emerge. A clear set of immediate priorities: 

• Contact your customs broker to pull and preserve entry records for IEEPA-affected shipments 
• Separate IEEPA tariff costs from Section 232 and Section 301 obligations in your accounting records — the refund claim will require that distinction to be well-documented 
• Review customer contracts with tariff-related pricing provisions to understand whether refund obligations flow downstream 
• If you operate in sales-tax states and passed IEEPA tariff costs to customers, engage your SALT advisors to assess potential exposure before state guidance is issued 
• For public companies, discuss the accounting and disclosure implications with your audit team, particularly if tariff costs were recognized in prior periods 
• Monitor for executive action under Section 232 or Section 301 authority, and update your exposure analysis if new duties are announced 

The legal chapter closed on February 20. The operational and tax chapter is still being written — and how well-prepared you are when the next developments arrive will depend heavily on the work you do right now. 

BPM’s international tax, corporate tax, transfer pricing, SALT, and transaction advisory teams are actively helping clients assess their specific exposure and build the documentation foundation for potential refund claims. Contact us to discuss what the ruling means for your business.