services / customs, trade & immex
Customs, Trade & IMMEX in Mexico
the duty deferral is the reason you came to immex. skip a padrón or miss an anexo 24 count, and mexico claws it back with interest.
before a single container clears mexican customs, the importing entity has to be listed on the padrón de importadores, and, for regulated inputs, on the matching padrón sectorial. those two registries are the gate. behind the gate sit the pieces that decide whether your landed cost is the number you modeled or a number you find out later: the immex regime that defers your duty, the iva certification that decides whether you front 16 percent at the border, the hs codes that set your tariff, and the usmca origin math that keeps your goods duty-free. this page is the trade stack, set up under your own name from the first shipment, so nothing has to be untangled after capital has moved.
01
what this covers
the customs and foreign-trade desk runs the full import stack, not a single filing:
- padrón de importadores and padrón sectorial registration, so your entity can actually import
- despacho aduanal, customs clearance coordinated through a licensed broker who files your pedimento
- immex registration and compliance, the regime that defers duty on temporarily imported inputs
- iva/ieps certification, so the 16 percent vat is deferred and not fronted and stranded
- anexo 24, 30, and 31 inventory control, the automated systems that keep the immex benefit alive
- usmca rules of origin, the regional-value-content math that qualifies your goods duty-free
- customs valuation, a defensible declared value that holds up when the pedimento is reviewed
- hs-code and bill-of-lading analysis, correct classification before it becomes a retroactive assessment
- freight and distribution coordination, the door-to-door layer where landed cost quietly leaks
you can take the whole desk as one workstream, or bring a single problem, an aduanas question, a classification you are unsure of, a certification you were told you did not need.
02
the deferral you came for is the one you can lose
most north american importers hear "immex" and hear "duty-free inputs." that is half of it. immex defers the duty. it does not defer the vat. without a separate iva/ieps certification you pay 16 percent at the border on every temporary import and wait months for the refund, and on a running import program that is millions in working capital sitting with the treasury instead of in your business. it is the most under-priced cash trap in a mexico entry, and it is invisible until the first refund cycle is late.
the second way the benefit disappears is compliance. the immex duty deferral is conditional on inventory control: anexo 24, and its automated counterparts anexo 30 and 31, have to reconcile what you imported temporarily against what you exported or transformed. when the counts do not tie out, the authority does not send a warning. it treats the unaccounted imports as permanent and claws the deferred duty back, with surcharges and interest, sometimes years after the shipment. the benefit you registered for becomes the liability you did not budget. we set the certification and the inventory control up correctly at the start, because retrofitting compliance onto an active program is the expensive version of the same work.
03
origin is a claim you have to be able to prove
usmca lets your goods enter duty-free only if they qualify, and qualification is regional value content you have to substantiate, not a declaration you make. for autos and auto parts the threshold runs to 75 percent regional value content, layered with labor-value-content requirements and separate steel and aluminum rules, and the rules-of-origin math is where a nearshoring cost case is won or lost. assembled in mexico is not the same as qualified in mexico. an origin claim you cannot defend on audit converts to retroactive duties, and because your customer relied on that claim, the exposure lands on both of you.
for importers moving goods under usmca, whether from the united states or canada, the immex program and usmca origin interact in ways that decide whether the nearshoring math holds, and both have to be read against your actual bill of materials rather than a generic threshold.
the same discipline runs down to the tariff line. a misclassified hs code sets the wrong duty rate, distorts your landed cost, and, when it is corrected on review, arrives as an assessment on everything you already imported under it. classification and customs valuation are not clerical. they are the numbers your entire entry economics rest on, and the trade environment keeps moving under them, from usmca content thresholds to the section 232 recut that changes what qualifies. the point of getting the codes and the origin right on the way in is that you never have to argue them on the way out.
frequently asked questions
What do you need to import into Mexico?
Before goods move, the importing entity has to be listed on the Padrón de Importadores, the general importers' registry the SAT maintains. For regulated inputs (steel, chemicals, textiles, and others) you also need the matching Padrón Sectorial. On top of that sits the customs clearance itself, the despacho aduanal, run through a licensed customs broker who files the pedimento. Miss the padrones and the goods do not clear, no matter how clean the paperwork behind them is.
Does the IMMEX program let you skip import taxes?
IMMEX defers the duty on temporarily imported inputs, not the VAT. Without a separate IVA/IEPS certification you front 16 percent at the border and wait months for the refund, which is millions in trapped working capital on a real import program. The certification is the piece most entrants discover too late, and it is the single most under-priced cash trap in a Mexico entry.
What are the USMCA rules of origin and why do they matter?
USMCA sets the regional value content a good has to carry to enter duty-free, and for autos it runs to 75 percent plus labor-value content and separate steel and aluminum rules. Origin is a claim you have to substantiate, not a box you tick. Unsubstantiated origin means retroactive duties, and your customer is exposed alongside you, so the qualification math belongs in the plan before the first shipment.
Do you need a customs broker to import into Mexico?
Yes. Clearance in Mexico runs through a licensed customs broker (agente aduanal) who files the pedimento and answers for the classification. The work that protects you sits upstream of the broker: correct HS codes, a defensible customs value, the padrones in place, and IMMEX inventory control that reconciles. We coordinate the broker and own the seams around them.
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