Most landed cost models get the duty rate right to two decimal places — and leave the MPF line blank. When I ask about the Merchandise Processing Fee, the answer is almost always the same: "our broker handles that." They do. By debiting your account.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection's published User Fee Table, the MPF is an administrative charge assessed on every formal customs entry, authorized under 19 USC 58c and 19 CFR 24.23. It is not a duty. It does not go into the Treasury's tariff revenue; it helps fund CBP's own operations. That distinction matters more than most importers realize: duty rates can be negotiated, excluded, and refunded. The MPF cannot. It is a per-entry toll — if there is entered value, the toll is due.
What the MPF Costs Right Now
The rates in effect are the FY2027 schedule, effective October 1, 2026. Per CBP's fee table, the fee on a formal entry is 0.3464% of the entered value, with a minimum of $34.58 and a maximum of $670.86 per entry. The prior year (FY2026, effective October 1, 2025) ran $33.58 to $651.50; the 0.3464% rate itself has not moved in years. The rate stays put while the floor and ceiling move — that is the inflation-adjustment mechanism written into the FAST Act, which revises the limits every October.
Informal entries — shipments valued at $2,500 or less — pay flat fees instead: for FY2027, $2.77 per entry for fully automated electronic filing, with higher tiers for manual or broker-prepared processing (check CBP's current table for the exact tier amounts). A formal entry filed on paper carries an additional $4.03 manual surcharge under the FY2026 schedule.
The fee most often confused with it is the HMF, the Harbor Maintenance Fee. The HMF applies only to ocean imports, at 0.125% of cargo value, with no cap. The rule of thumb: the MPF is a clearance fee, due on air, ocean, and land entries alike; the HMF is a port-usage fee, due only on ocean freight. One ocean shipment pays both.
| Fee | Applies to | Rate | Floor / ceiling | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MPF | Every formal entry | 0.3464% of value | $34.58 – $670.86 (FY2027) | Air, ocean, and land |
| HMF | Ocean imports | 0.125% of value | No cap | Ocean only |
| Informal entry fee | Shipments ≤ $2,500 | Flat, from $2.77 | Tiered by processing type | Cheapest tier is fully automated |
Three Worked Examples: How Much MPF Really Costs
Using FY2027 rates:
- $5,000 entered value: $5,000 × 0.3464% = $17.32, below the floor — assessed at $34.58.
- $50,000 entered value: $50,000 × 0.3464% = $173.20, inside the band — assessed at $173.20.
- $250,000 entered value: $250,000 × 0.3464% = $866.00, above the ceiling — capped at $670.86.
Two break-even points are worth memorizing: below roughly $9,983 of entered value, every entry pays the $34.58 floor; above roughly $193,684, every entry pays the $670.86 cap, and the fee does not rise by a cent across that entire $180,000-plus span.
Here is the counterintuitive part: the fee is regressive. The $5,000 entry bears an effective rate of 0.69%; the $50,000 entry bears 0.35% — exactly half. Small-ticket importers carry the heaviest relative burden, while high-value entries enjoy a "cap dividend." Any landed cost model that applies one flat percentage to all entries gets the small tickets wrong, and the small tickets are where the error concentrates.
A case from November 2025: a Florida furniture importer running about 60 entries a year at roughly $8,000 each. His cost model had duties and ocean freight, but neither fee. At $8,000, it was the $33.58 floor (FY2026 rates then in effect) and the HMF was $10.00 — $43.58 per entry unaccounted for, or $2,614.80 a year. Not a large number, except that he quoted his customers on a 3% net margin, and that $2,600 quietly consumed most of half a year's margin buffer. His fix was a single line: both fees written into his quoting template as standing formulas. They have not been missed since.
Consolidate or Split: The Other Side of a Per-Entry Fee
Because the fee is charged per entry rather than per importer, the number of entries becomes a variable you control. In March 2026, a client of a 3PL in Ontario, California was filing 10 small entries a week at about $3,000 each. Filed separately, each one hit the floor: 10 × $34.58 = $345.80 per week. Consolidated into a single $30,000 entry: $30,000 × 0.3464% = $103.92. A difference of $241.88 a week, or $12,577.76 over 52 weeks.
Consolidation is not free money, though. One entry means ten shipments wait for the slowest one before filing — two to three days of delay; one examination holds all ten; and the consolidated paperwork is more complex, so the broker's fee rises. The honest version of the math: consolidation savings must exceed the cost of the delay plus the higher brokerage fee. For fast-turning, time-sensitive e-commerce freight, splitting is expensive but fast; for replenishment freight, consolidation is pure margin. There is no standard answer — only arithmetic.
One exemption deserves mention because so few importers know it exists: goods that qualify under USMCA and certain other free trade agreements, with the preference properly claimed, are exempt from the fee. It is one of the rare "pay less" provisions in the fee rules, but the conditions are strict — confirm applicability with CBP's current guidance and your broker rather than assuming.
Outlook: This Toll Only Goes Up
The causal chain has three links. First, the fee was created by the COBRA of 1985 as a user fee, designed so that users of customs services share CBP's operating costs — it was never a trade policy instrument. Second, the FAST Act indexed it to inflation, adjusting the floor and ceiling every October, which is why the FY2027 cap sits at $670.86 and will very likely rise again next year. Third, it is independent of tariff negotiations: duty rates can swing wildly with Section 301 actions or bilateral deals while the 0.3464% never moves — nobody bargains over it at the negotiating table.
Two trend judgments follow. First, the real burden of the fee will creep upward, because the limits track inflation while the rate is fixed — small-ticket importers feel it most, since every $1 added to the floor is pure cost. Second, the "cap dividend" on high-value entries is slowly eroding: the ceiling's move from $651.50 to $670.86 lifted the cap threshold from roughly $188,000 to roughly $193,684. Small numbers, clear direction.
I will leave an open question rather than a conclusion: now that more importers are writing the fee into their landed cost templates, will this once-invisible line start driving deliberate entry strategies — say, deliberately sizing entries into the roughly $9,983–$193,684 band where the fee is linear, so that every dollar of entered value carries a known fee cost? The fee table refreshes every October. The numbers in your template should refresh with it.
By Dr. Chen, Supply Chain Researcher
