The federal government's fiscal year ended on Wednesday, and the first full-year figures, in the Treasury's daily cash statement, show what the Supreme Court's tariff ruling did to the money.
On the way in, nothing looks wrong. Deposits of customs duties, taxes and fees came to $332.6 billion in the 12 months to 30 September. That is up from $215.2 billion in fiscal 2025 and $95.7 billion in fiscal 2024, and it is the largest sum on record by a wide margin.
On the way out, the figure is new. The Treasury paid $157.8 billion out of its account through Customs and Border Protection in fiscal 2026. In each of the two previous fiscal years, that line came to about $10.5 billion. The difference, roughly $147 billion, is almost entirely refunds of the tariffs the Supreme Court struck down in February.
Net of those payments, by our calculation, the border brought in about $174.8 billion in fiscal 2026. In fiscal 2025, the same calculation gives $204.4 billion. The year that set a record for tariff collections raised about $30 billion less at the border than the year before it.
Paid out faster than collected
The refunds did not arrive evenly. From October to April, payments through Customs averaged about $2 billion a month, already above the usual level of less than $1 billion. In May they jumped to $23.3 billion. In June they reached $51.0 billion, more than twice the $24.8 billion of duties deposited that month. July brought another $35.5 billion.
Taken together, from May to September Customs paid out $143.6 billion and took in $126.1 billion. Over those five months the border cost the Treasury about $17.5 billion more than it raised. The pace of refunds has slowed but not stopped. In September, Customs paid out $21.3 billion and collected $26.6 billion.
When the government's monthly budget figures were published in July, a Treasury official said the increase was almost entirely because of the Supreme Court's decision, The Guardian reported. At the time the figure was $81 billion.
Where the refunds stand
The court ruled 6-3 in February that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act did not allow the president to impose his "Liberation Day" tariffs. The Court of International Trade then ordered Customs to set up a way to return the money, and its online refund system, known as CAPE, went live around April.
As of 11 September, CAPE had accepted about $134.7 billion in potential and certified refunds and sent $122 billion of it to the Treasury for payment, according to a court declaration from Brandon Lord, executive director of CBP's Trade Programs Directorate, reported by Supply Chain Dive. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta puts the total sum at stake at nearly $170 billion.
The next round opens on Tuesday. From 6 October, CAPE will take claims on entries that Customs had already finally liquidated, meaning closed its books on. Supply Chain Dive put that category at about $11.4 billion, or 6.9 per cent of the tariffs collected under the emergency law. The terms are narrower than the first two phases. Only importers that have sued, won a court order to reliquidate their entries and supplied a valid importer number by 30 July can file from Tuesday, according to an update from the law firm Warner Norcross + Judd. More than 3,700 refund suits have been filed at the trade court. The Justice Department is appealing the order that extended refunds to those entries, arguing that it should cover only companies that sued.
"Please read the eligibility requirements before telling your CFO to start spending the refund," Pete Mento, who runs global trade advisory services at the accounting firm Baker Tilly, wrote on LinkedIn.
What companies are doing with it
Refunds are paid to the importer of record, the business that paid the duty at the border. The Atlanta Fed asked more than 1,100 executives in August what they were doing with theirs. Nearly a quarter of the firms that responded believed they were eligible, and about 40 per cent of those had already been paid. Publicly listed companies were more than twice as likely as others to have received a refund. On average the refunds came to 1.7 per cent of a firm's annual revenue.
Asked to name every use that applied, 70 per cent of firms said they expected to keep at least some of the money as cash, and more than half planned to put some into research or capital projects. Smaller shares expected to give customers rebates (17.2 per cent), cut prices (14.8 per cent) or pay bonuses to staff (12.7 per cent) or managers (10.1 per cent).
The Atlanta Fed's economists called the last group surprising, since textbook models predict that companies hold a one-off windfall or hand it to shareholders. The results "suggest that a nontrivial portion of tariff refunds directly benefit customers and employees", they wrote. Walmart and BJ's Wholesale Club have said they are using refunds to lower prices, Supply Chain Dive reported. Nintendo has said its customers are not entitled to any of its refund.
The tariffs that replaced them
Duties are still being collected, under other laws. Monthly customs deposits were $34.2 billion last October, the highest of the fiscal year, fell to about $25 billion after the ruling and were $26.6 billion in September, against $31.7 billion a year earlier.
After the ruling, the administration turned first to a temporary authority in the Trade Act of 1974, which has since expired. It then used Section 301 of the same law to add a surcharge of between 10 and 12.5 per cent on goods from 60 economies, which together supply the vast majority of US imports, citing investigations by the US Trade Representative into forced labour, The Hill reported.
Those tariffs are now in court too. On Wednesday the Court of International Trade heard challenges from small businesses and Democratic-led states, some of them the same small businesses that won in February. "Rinse and repeat, baby!" said Rick Woldenberg, who runs Learning Resources, the family-run educational toy company whose case gave the Supreme Court ruling its name.
The Justice Department told the court that the new tariffs are not the old ones repackaged. Their timing, it wrote, "shows, at most, that the Trump Administration continues to maintain that tariffs are beneficial to the American economy."
Whatever the court decides, fiscal 2026 has already shown how the arithmetic works in reverse. A tariff struck down is not just revenue that stops. The money already collected has to be paid back, and the government has now done most of that. The Monthly Treasury Statement for September, due later this month, will give the official net figure for the year. The Treasury's daily statement also shows another fast-growing line: interest payments on the federal debt rose 16 per cent over the year.
Customs deposits and Customs and Border Protection withdrawals, monthly and fiscal-year-to-date, are from the US Treasury's Daily Treasury Statement (operating cash deposits and withdrawals), retrieved from the Fiscal Data API for the last business day of each month from October 2025 to September 2026 and for 30 September 2025 and 30 September 2024. The deposit category was renamed during the year, from "Customs and Certain Excise Taxes" to "Customs Duties, Taxes, and Fees", and includes some fees and excise taxes as well as tariffs. The net figures, the five-month comparison and the estimate of payments above the previous years' level are this publication's calculations; the Daily Treasury Statement records cash, and the official accounting of customs duties net of refunds will appear in the Monthly Treasury Statement for September. The Treasury official's explanation of the increase in refunds and the $81 billion figure are from The Guardian (14 July 2026). The CBP court declaration of Brandon Lord, the refund totals as of 11 September, the Phase 3 start date, its estimated size and the quotation from Pete Mento are from Supply Chain Dive (17 September 2026, via Yahoo Finance). Eligibility conditions for Phase 3 and the number of refund suits are from a Warner Norcross + Judd client update published on JD Supra (17 September 2026). Survey figures and the quotation from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta are from its Policy Hub: Macroblog post "How Are Firms Using Their Tariff Refunds?" (21 September 2026), read in full; company examples are from Supply Chain Dive (24 September 2026). The Supreme Court vote, the Section 301 surcharge, the quotations from Rick Woldenberg, Sara Albrecht and the Justice Department are from The Hill (29 September 2026). Accurate to 1pm ET on 4 October 2026.
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