Did you know that there are Public Records of all your Imports? Your Company name, the Factory your purchased from, the Quantity and the Commodity are all accessible on public record.
These records are compiled by U.S. Customs in the Automated Manifest System (AMS).
A person or business can access this data and see your business name, the name of the factory overseas you are importing from, what commodity you are importing, and frequency of your import shipments.
For some companies, this is sensitive data in their competitive industry. The good news is that you can make your business name and your vendor(s) names confidential on the vessel manifest with minimal effort.
In order to do this, you will need to send a letter to the Privacy Branch of US Customs & Border Protection (USCBP) requesting that your sensitive information not be disclosed on the vessel manifest. This will hold your company name confidential for 2 years. At the end of the 2 years, you will need to renew your confidentiality request. The requests typically take approx 60 days to process once submitted to USCBP.
Please be sure to include a maximum of 10 variations of the company name, U.S. mailing address, U.S. TIN and (EIN or SSN). There is no fee associated with the request for confidentiality. …You will receive a response when the confidentiality request has been granted and it will state the effective time period (e.g. March 20, 2011-March 20, 2013). Please note that we cannot provide a response time. Read more from US Customs Border & Protection
You can submit your letter by email, fax or by mail: Email: privacy.cbp@dhs.gov Fax: (202)325-0152 – 0154
CBP Privacy Officer U.S. Customs and Border Protection 90 K Street, N.E. 10th Floor Washington D.C. 20229-1177For more information: 19 CFR 103.31 (d),
Related articles
- Advice for New Importers (supfrt.com)
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