What is the difference between 9802.00.40 and 9802.00.50?

Both tax only the value of the repairs or alterations — the split is why the work was done. Subheading 9802.00.40 covers repairs made pursuant to a warranty; 9802.00.50 covers everything else. The rate column reads identically (“a duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations”, per U.S. note 3), so the economics are the same — but you must land under the provision that actually describes your shipment, and each carries its own statistical suffixes (3 lines under .40, 4 under .50).

Do I pay duty on the whole machine when I use 9802.00.40?

No — that is precisely what the provision exists for. The general rate string, read verbatim from the schedule, is “A duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations (see U.S. note 3 of this subchapter)”. Only the repair bill crosses the border as a taxable base; the machine’s original export value does not re-enter the calculation, provided the eligibility paperwork holds.

How much duty would 9802.00.40 have saved in a real case?

Take our worked example: a fuel-injection pump classified under 8413.30.10.00 whose general column carries 2.5%. Declaring a $10,000 machine directly costs $250.00 at entry. Route the same unit through 9802.00.40 after a $1,500 repair and the taxable base is the fix alone: $37.50 — a saving of $212.50, 85.0% of the direct bill. The larger the machine relative to the repair, the wider that gap.

What paperwork does a 9802 claim require?

Regulations under 19 CFR part 10, subpart J require the articles to be identified as previously exported and the repair or alteration to be documented: an entry summary claiming the subheading, invoices separating the repair value from parts, and proof the work did not create a new or commercially different good. Missing or inconsistent repair-value documentation is the most common reason claims collapse back to full-value taxation.

Where does 9802 end and 9801 begin?

9801.00.10 is the no-questions family: US-origin goods returned without having been advanced in value enter completely duty-free. 9802 applies once something happened to the goods abroad — a repair, alteration or processing step — and then taxes only that added work. Our companion piece decodes the 9801 side of the split, including its two distinct declarations.

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HTS 9802 Repairs and Warranty Reimports: Pay Duty on the Fix, Not the Machine

Updated October 2026. Every figure below is recomputed at build time from our Chapter 98 snapshot (chapter98_special_programs.json, USITC REST export) and the chapters 01–97 schedule export; provenance notes are embedded in the page source.

Your pump, press or controller shipped out of Los Angeles eighteen months ago and comes back broken. Somewhere between the original export and this morning’s arrival, someone replaced a bearing set, rewound a motor, or swapped a control board — and now the machine has to clear US customs a second time. Importers who treat that reentry like a fresh import of a $10,000 asset pay duty on the whole machine. Importers who know Chapter 98 pay duty on the wrench work. Between those two outcomes sits one correctly chosen eight-digit provision: 9802.00.40, repairs or alterations made pursuant to a warranty.

The short version: Chapter 98 holds 595 special-classification provisions, 116 of them duty-free, and the 9802.00 repair family is the piece that decides whether your warranty loop costs $250.00 or $37.50 at entry, as our worked example shows. Four rate-bearing provisions carry all of 9802.00’s traffic; picking the wrong one converts a repair-value tax into a full-value tax without any error message telling you so.

1. Where 9802 sits in the Chapter 98 landscape

Chapter 98 is the tariff schedule’s exceptions wing: 595 provisions covering returned goods, temporary visitors’ effects, samples, and humanitarian imports, of which 116 carry a general rate of Free. Within it, the 9802 subheading spans 19 schedule lines organized around a simple question: what happened to these goods while they were outside the United States? Nothing at all points to 9801 (pure US goods returned). Something got fixed, altered or processed points here — and the answer determines which of the four rate-bearing provisions applies.

We maintain a full Chapter 98 special classification census for the wide-angle view; this page goes deep on the repair lane because it is the one exporters hit most often by accident. The sibling US goods returned 9801.00.10 guide covers the no-work-done branch in detail. Keep the division straight: 9801 rewards goods that left and came back untouched; 9802 prices the touch.

2. Anatomy of 9802.00: the provisions that matter

Strip away statistical suffixes and the entire 9802.00 block collapses into four rate-bearing provisions — plus one outright-Free line (9802.00.20, photographic films and dry plates) and the Mexico textile-assembly line 9802.00.91, whose treatment derives from U.S. note 4 rather than an inline rate string. Each rate-bearing provision answers the what-happened-abroad question differently, and the general rate column differs accordingly:

Provision	Covers	General duty rate (verbatim)	Statistical lines below
`9802.00.40`	Repairs or alterations made pursuant to a warranty	A duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations (see U.S. note 3 of this subchapter)	2
`9802.00.50`	Other	A duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations (see U.S. note 3 of this subchapter)	3
`9802.00.60.00`	Any article of metal (as defined in U.S. note 3(e) of this subchapter) manufactured in the United States or subjected to a process of manufacture in the United States, if exported for further processing, and if the exported article as processed outside the United States, or the article which results from the processing outside the United States, is returned to the United States for further processing	A duty upon the value of such processing outside the United States (see U.S. note 3 of this subchapter)	0
`9802.00.80`	Articles, except goods of heading 9802.00.91 and goods imported under provisions of subchapter XIX of this chapter and goods imported under provisions of subchapter XX, assembled abroad in whole or in part of fabricated components, the product of the United States, which (a) were exported in condition ready for assembly without further fabrication, (b) have not lost their physical identity in such articles by change in form, shape or otherwise, and (c) have not been advanced in value or improved in condition abroad except by being assembled and except by operations incidental to the assembly process such as cleaning, lubricating and painting	A duty upon the full value of the imported article, less the cost or value of such products of the United States (see U.S. Note 4 of this subchapter)	8

Recomputed from data/chapter98_special_programs.json (USITC HTS REST export; replay with python3 .state/scripts/topic_pool_batch_probe.py, probe keys K7/K8). Statistical-line counts include every child line beneath each provision.

Three of the four share a philosophy: tax the value added abroad, not the value created at home. Provisions 9802.00.40 (warranty repairs) and 9802.00.50 (all other repairs) levy “a duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations.” Provision 9802.00.60 extends the same logic to metal articles processed outside the country. Then there is 9802.00.80 — the fallback nobody should reach by default — which taxes “the full value of the imported article, less the cost or value of such products of the United States.” That is a dramatically broader base, and reaching it usually means the paperwork for a narrower provision failed somewhere.

3. The worked example: a pump, a warranty, and 85.0%

Numbers make the stakes concrete. Consider a fuel-injection pump for compression-ignition engines, classified under 8413.30.10.00. Its general column in the live schedule reads 2.5% — modest by textile standards, typical for machinery. Suppose the pump was originally exported with a declared value of $10,000, spent a year driving a generator on a Central American sugar estate, then failed and went to an authorized service center in Guatemala City for $1,500 of warranty repair work.

If it reenters declared as an ordinary import of heading 8413, the duty base is the machine’s full value: $10,000 × 2.5% = $250.00. Claimed correctly under 9802.00.40, the base is the repair: $1,500 × 2.5% = $37.50. The provision choice is worth $212.50 on a single unit — 85.0% of the direct-entry bill — and scales linearly: a $100,000 machining center with a $12,000 repair multiplies the same ratio by ten.

Note what the example deliberately avoids: it compares correct usage against ordinary declaration, not against fraudulently low repair invoices. The arithmetic is honest precisely because both legs come from the same published rate column; the only variable is which provision you stand under when the entry summary is filed. When the stack involves Section 301 action lists or other Chapter 99 overlays on top of the base rate, the tariff stacking walkthrough shows how the layers combine — and why repair-value claims interact with each layer separately.

4. What counts as a repair (and what voids the claim)

The implementing regulations draw a tight circle around the word “repair.” Restoration, addition, renovation, re-dyeing, cleaning and re-sterilizing all qualify — the operative test is that the treatment does not destroy the essential characteristics of the good or create a new or commercially different product. Send a machine tool abroad and receive back a machine tool: covered. Send components abroad for assembly into a finished machine and the analysis changes entirely, potentially pulling the entry toward ordinary classification or, for textiles, the Mexico assembly provision 9802.00.91.

Two carve-outs bite hardest in practice. First, goods exported incomplete for their intended use do not earn duty-free repair treatment when the operation performed abroad is one customarily performed in finishing that kind of good — the regulation closes the loophole of exporting half-made goods specifically to finish them cheaply. Second, the claim attaches to condition as exported: improvements or upgrades beyond restoring the original condition may fall outside the repair value, and an examiner can recompute the base. Neither trap is exotic; both surface constantly in warranty loops where field technicians upgrade parts “while they are in there.”

5. Paperwork: where 9802 claims live or die

Identify the goods as previously exported. Serial numbers, original export records, or manufacturer attestations tying this physical unit to a documented export. CBP’s first question is not what the repair cost — it is whether this object ever left in the first place.
Separate the repair value on the invoice. Labour, parts and materials must be individually stated. A single blended “service fee” forces the examiner to estimate, and estimates skew high.
Claim the right subheadings. The .40 versus .50 split turns on warranty status, and each carries its own statistical suffixes — internal combustion engines under 9802.00.40.20 / 9802.00.50.30, other goods under .40.40/.50.60. The statistical suffix anatomy explains why those trailing digits decide reporting obligations even when the rate is identical.
Keep the claim proportionate. Duty accrues on the repair value at the rate applicable to the finished article — the same rate lookup as a direct import, applied to a smaller base.

Get any step wrong and the fallback is not a penalty notice; it is silence — the entry processes under whatever provision the paperwork supports, typically 9802.00.80 or plain heading 8413, and you discover the overpayment at reconciliation, if ever. For a base-rate sanity check before filing, our landed-cost duty calculator prices any HTS line instantly and shows the rate basis behind the number.

6. Frequently asked questions

1. What is the difference between 9802.00.40 and 9802.00.50?: Both tax only the value of the repairs or alterations — the split is why the work was done. Subheading 9802.00.40 covers repairs made pursuant to a warranty; 9802.00.50 covers everything else. The rate column reads identically (“a duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations”, per U.S. note 3), so the economics are the same — but you must land under the provision that actually describes your shipment, and each carries its own statistical suffixes (3 lines under .40, 4 under .50).
2. Do I pay duty on the whole machine when I use 9802.00.40?: No — that is precisely what the provision exists for. The general rate string, read verbatim from the schedule, is “A duty upon the value of the repairs or alterations (see U.S. note 3 of this subchapter)”. Only the repair bill crosses the border as a taxable base; the machine’s original export value does not re-enter the calculation, provided the eligibility paperwork holds.
3. How much duty would 9802.00.40 have saved in a real case?: Take our worked example: a fuel-injection pump classified under 8413.30.10.00 whose general column carries 2.5%. Declaring a $10,000 machine directly costs $250.00 at entry. Route the same unit through 9802.00.40 after a $1,500 repair and the taxable base is the fix alone: $37.50 — a saving of $212.50, 85.0% of the direct bill. The larger the machine relative to the repair, the wider that gap.
4. What paperwork does a 9802 claim require?: Regulations under 19 CFR part 10, subpart J require the articles to be identified as previously exported and the repair or alteration to be documented: an entry summary claiming the subheading, invoices separating the repair value from parts, and proof the work did not create a new or commercially different good. Missing or inconsistent repair-value documentation is the most common reason claims collapse back to full-value taxation.
5. Where does 9802 end and 9801 begin?: 9801.00.10 is the no-questions family: US-origin goods returned without having been advanced in value enter completely duty-free. 9802 applies once something happened to the goods abroad — a repair, alteration or processing step — and then taxes only that added work. Our companion piece decodes the 9801 side of the split, including its two distinct declarations.

7. Recap

595 provisions, 116 duty-free: Chapter 98 is small, load-bearing, and unforgiving about which line you claim.
Four rate-bearing provisions cover all of 9802.00; two of them (.40 and .50) tax only the repair value and differ solely on warranty status.
The worked example pays $37.50 instead of $250.00 — a 85.0% reduction on a 2.5%-rated pump — purely through correct provision selection.
Documentation makes the claim: proof of prior export, separated repair-value invoices, and the warranty/non-warranty routing decision.