CARM Portal Registration went live on May 25th and there have been challenges with the affinity questions for many. The CBSA has made some changes or clarifications as outlined below:
WHAT IS THE BALANCE OF YOUR LAST STATEMENT OF ACCOUNT?
The CBSA has made a change to allow importers that are using multiple brokers to input the amount from any one of their customs broker’s SOA rather than having a $ value of the combination of all of them.
This is where the importer/customs brokers must look to find the SOA amount that will be accepted for registration:
Importer SOA:
Importer uses their own SOA or the customs broker uses their own Importer SOA when registering in the portal:
- Add up lines “I. Importer Total Payable” & “J. Broker Total Payable” to obtain the SOA balance. If it is positive, this is an answer the system will accept.
- If the SOA balance is 0, go back to a previous month(s) until a balance is found on the SOA, however if an importer uses a customs broker(s) to receive the SOA, the importer would have to check with the other customs broker’s SOA before going to previous months (this is because for a given date, even if one of the SOA’S for a given BN15 values is non-zero the TCP user would have to enter that value. If an importer SOA is $0 but for the same importer BN15, they have 2 customs brokers and one of the customs broker’s SOA has a non-zero value for this importer BN15, the system will expect this value.
- If a negative balance is found on the SOA, it will not be accepted and the client is asked to use the other two affinity questions.
- Zero or negative balances are not accepted today but changes are being made to allow 0 and negative balances as of June 19th, 2021.
Customs Broker SOA:
Customs broker uses their customs broker SOA to provide the balance to the importer or the customs broker uses the customs broker SOA to find the balance for their own importer account.
- The customs broker can search for the BN15 on the customs broker SOA and use line “I. Importer Total Payable”. If this amount is positive, the system will accept this answer.
- If the importer has multiple customs brokers, any of the positive amounts showing for any customs broker will be accepted.
- If the SOA shows a zero balance, try a previous month(s) until a balance is found but if the importer has other customs brokers then the importer would have to check with each customs broker to find out if the given months SOA balance is non-Zero.
- If a negative balance is found on one of the customs broker SOA, the importer could try another customs broker or use the other two affinity questions.
- Zero or negative balances are not accepted today but changes are being made to allow 0 and negative balances as of June 19th, 2021.
WHAT IS THE TRANSACTION NUMBER AND TOTAL DUTIES AND TAXES OF ONE OF YOUR RECENT TRANSACTIONS?
Although a .00 amount cannot be entered for the SOA question until June 19th, 2021, it can be used when a transaction number that CARM provides for the affinity question on transaction number has a .00 amount. The customs broker/importer needs to provide the total duties and taxes on the B3 – Field 51 for that transaction number when prompted. $0.00 amount is accepted.
WHAT IS THE EXACT VALUE OF YOUR MOST RECENT PAYMENT?
When choosing the payment question as one of the affinity questions it must be the exact payment amount of the most recent payment registered in the CBSA system. Take note that there can be up to a 7 day delay in some payments getting “posted” to the CBSA once the payment is made. If two customs brokers and an importer all made payments on the same day, it will be the payment $ of the last one that was posted in the CBSA system.
If you have any questions or feedback on CARM please email [email protected]