U.S. Customs and Border Protection Form 300 is used by owners of bonded warehouses to provide necessary information to CBP at the end of each calendar year. A bonded warehouse is a storage facility licensed by U.S. Customs for storage of goods which have not yet cleared U.S. Customs, even though they have entered the physical territory of the United States. Because bonded warehouses contain goods which haven’t gone through the customs clearance process, they frequently contain items which are subject to customs duties or may not even be permitted into the country.
There are many reasons to use a bonded warehouse. Shipment merely in transit through the United States en route to a third country may need to be temporarily stored before being transferred to a new truck or ship. Rather than clearing Customs, paying duties, and then filing a drawback for a refund on those duties, owners of these goods will likely prefer to store them temporarily at a bonded warehouse.
Bonded warehouses are also frequently used to store goods that are subject to quotas which have already been filled for the year. The United States has quotas which limit the quantity of textile imports from certain countries, particularly China. If the textile quota is reached while a shipment is already on the ocean, their owner may have no choice but to bring them into the physical territory of the United States, even if they cannot be admitted to the Customs territory of the United States. Frequently the best option for an importer caught in such a situation is to store the goods at a bonded warehouse and wait till the quota re-opens the following year.
Because of the nature of the goods stored at bonded warehouses, U.S. Customs is required to keep a close watch on all goods stored there. The owners of a bonded warehouse must therefore file this form each year to inform customs of any changes to their inventory status.
