Statement

Supporting Statement

Automated Clearinghouse Credit

1651-0078

A. Justification

1. The collection of information is required to maintain point of contact data (i.e., company name, address, phone number, importer number, contact name) for a company. 19 CFR 24.25 concerns the Automated Clearinghouse (ACH) and allows participants to transmit a daily statement, deferred tax, and bill payments electronically through a financial institution directly to a CBP account. ACH credit allows the payer to exercise more control over the payment process and does not require the disclosure of bank account information to CBP. ACH is also necessary to enable the company’s bank to transmit the payment to CBP. The bank needs to know the routing instructions (i.e., CBP bank account number), company information (i.e. importer number) and payment information (i.e., document number and amount). This program is authorized by 19 U.S.C. 1202.

2. The information is to be used by CBP officers to send information to the company (such as revised format requirements) and to contact the company if there is a payment problem (i.e., overpayment/underpayment). It is also used to apply the payment data that is transmitted electronically to the records (i.e. statement, bill or deferred tax) in the Automated Commercial System (ACS). This is a fully automated process.

3. Currently, the information that the participants submit for ACH, including importer name, phone number and contact information, is faxed to CBP. However, electronic submission is planned under the new Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) for 2012.

4. Since each notice is unique, this information is not duplicated elsewhere.

5. No additional consideration has been given to small businesses or entities.

6. The data collection formats used are mandated by the National Automated Clearinghouse Association. If this information were not collected, the Government would not know who to contact if there is a problem or to advise companies of new features or requirements, and if the financial data is not collected, then the ACH Credit transmission cannot occur. The company would have to use another method to pay their duties, such as a check.

7. This information collection is conducted in a manner consistent with the guidelines in 5 CFR 1320.5(c)(2).

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8. Public comments were solicited through two Federal Register notices dated March 25, 2008 (Volume 73, Page 15765) and on June 10, 1008 (Volume 73, Page 32726). As of this submission no comments have been received.

9. There is no offer of a monetary or material value for this information collection.

10. This information collection does not contain questions of a commercially sensitive nature.

11. There are no questions of a personal or sensitive nature on this declaration.

12.

TOTAL ANNUAL BURDEN HOURS	NO. OF RESPONDENTS	NO. OF RESPONSES PER RESPONDENT	TOTAL RESPONSES	TIME PER RESPONSE
249	65	46	3000	5 minutes (.083 hours)

Public Cost

The estimated cost to the respondents is estimated at $4394.85. This is based on the estimated burden hours (249) multiplied (x) hourly rate ($17.65).

13. Estimated Record Keeping Burden on the Public. There is no record keeping burden associated with this collection.

Estimated Capitalization Cost Burden on the Public. There are no capitalization cost associated with this information collection.

14. Estimated Cost to the Federal Government - There appears to be little, if any time/cost associated with ACH Credit for CBP. It is a fully automated process. The electronic payments are applied by an ACS batch process to the open statement, bill or deferred tax records. The only manual intervention occurs when the payment is erroneous, i.e, underpayment and overpayment. There have only been a few transactions that have contained errors.

15. There are no changes to this collection of information

16. This information will not be published for statistical purposes.

17. This collection does not involve a form so there is no printed expiration date.

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18. There are no exceptions to the certification statements identified in Item 19 on the 83-i.

2. No statistical methods were employed.