Harbor maintenance fee: HMF rate, exemptions and who pays

The Harbor Maintenance Fee, or HMF, is a US charge of 0.125 percent of the value of commercial cargo loaded onto or unloaded from a vessel at a federally maintained port. Unlike the merchandise processing fee, it has no minimum and no maximum, so it scales straight up with the value of your shipment. It applies only to waterborne cargo: if your goods arrive by air, truck or rail, the fee never attaches at all. Exports pay nothing, because the Supreme Court held in 1998 that charging it on exports is unconstitutional. It is authorized by 26 USC 4461 and administered by CBP under 19 CFR 24.24.

For an ocean importer the HMF is a permanent line on every entry, and because it is uncapped it can quietly become the largest fee on a high-value container. Here is how it works, who owes it, what is exempt, and how it differs from the fee people most often confuse it with.

How the harbor maintenance fee is calculated

Multiply the value of the cargo by 0.00125. That is the whole calculation. A 40,000 dollar ocean shipment owes 50 dollars. A 900,000 dollar shipment owes 1,125 dollars. There is no floor and no ceiling anywhere in the statute or the regulation, which is the structural detail that matters most: the MPF stops climbing once an entry passes roughly 188,000 dollars in value, but the HMF keeps going. On a large, low-duty ocean entry, the HMF is routinely the bigger of the two fees.

For imports, the value used is the CBP appraised value under 19 USC 1401a, the same basis as duty, normally the transaction value of the goods. The fee is collected through the ordinary entry process and shown on the entry summary alongside duty and MPF. It applies to formal entries broadly, including warehouse entries, temporary importation bonds, and admissions into a foreign trade zone.

One more difference worth internalizing: the HMF rate is fixed in statute and does not move. The MPF caps are adjusted for inflation every fiscal year, which is why they creep upward each October. The 0.125 percent has been unchanged since 1991.

Vessel only, and why that trips people up

The trigger is the physical act of loading or unloading cargo from a commercial vessel at a covered port. Air freight, truck crossings from Canada or Mexico, and rail arrivals are not exempt from the HMF in any technical sense. The tax simply never attaches to them, because no vessel is involved. That distinction sounds academic until you are reconciling a broker's bill and wondering why two shipments of identical goods carry different fees. The one that came by ocean has an HMF line. The air shipment does not.

Cargo arriving by vessel from Canada or Mexico is fully subject. There is no land-border carve-out hiding in the regulation, and there is no bulk cargo exemption either, despite that being a persistent piece of folklore. Bulk commodities pay the same 0.125 percent as containerized freight.

"Port" is also narrower than it sounds. Under 19 CFR 24.24(b)(1), a covered port is a channel or harbor in the customs territory that is not an inland waterway, is open to public navigation, and has received federal funds for construction, maintenance or operation since 1977. The regulation carries an explicit list. Inland waterway traffic is handled through a separate fuel tax instead.

Who actually owes it

There are three separate liability tracks, and only the first affects most importers.

On imports, the importer is liable at the time of unloading, and the fee is collected at entry. On domestic port-to-port movements, which surprises people who assume the HMF is an import charge, the shipper who pays the freight is liable, and the fee is charged once per movement rather than at both ends. On passenger vessels, the fare counts as commercial cargo and the vessel operator is liable. Cruise lines, not passengers, file those.

Movements entirely within a single port are not charged, and the same cargo on the same vessel is never charged twice. If the fee was assessed on loading, the unloading is free, and the reverse.

Why exports pay no harbor maintenance fee

This is settled law, and it is worth knowing because it explains an asymmetry that otherwise looks arbitrary. In United States v. United States Shoe Corp., 523 U.S. 360 (1998), a unanimous Supreme Court held that the harbor maintenance tax violates the Export Clause of the Constitution as applied to exports. The reasoning turned on structure: because the charge is purely ad valorem, the value of export cargo does not reliably correspond to the harbor services the exporter actually uses, which made it a tax on exports rather than a permissible user fee.

Congress then conformed the statute. 26 USC 4462(d) now states plainly that the tax does not apply to commercial cargo to be exported from the United States. So a US exporter shipping by ocean pays zero HMF, while an importer bringing the same value of goods through the same port pays the full 0.125 percent.

Exemptions and thresholds

The exemptions in 19 CFR 24.24(c) are specific rather than general. They cover bunker fuel, ship's stores and vessel equipment; fish and other aquatic life caught and not previously landed on shore; ferries carrying passengers and their vehicles; vessels whose fuel is already subject to the inland waterway fuel tax; cargo entered in bond for transportation and direct exportation; cargo of the US government; and cargo certified as intended for humanitarian or development assistance abroad.

There is also a set of geographic exemptions covering Alaska, Hawaii and the US possessions, running in both directions and within them, with one pointed exception: Alaskan crude oil is expressly excluded from the definition of exempt cargo, so it is taxed.

Separately, three de minimis thresholds function like exemptions in practice. An imported shipment that qualifies for informal entry owes no HMF. A domestic shipment valued at 1,000 dollars or less owes none. And a quarterly filer whose fee-assessed shipments total 10,000 dollars or less for the quarter does not have to make that quarter's payment. These are thresholds below which nothing is owed, not minimum charges. Do not confuse them with the MPF minimum, which works the opposite way.

How and when the fee is paid

If you are an importer, you do not file anything separately. The HMF is collected through normal CBP procedures at entry and appears on the CBP Form 7501 entry summary, or its electronic equivalent in ACE, next to duty and MPF. Your broker handles it as part of the entry.

Quarterly filing applies to a narrower group: domestic shippers, applicants admitting goods into a foreign trade zone, and passenger vessel operators. They report on CBP Form 349, the Harbor Maintenance Fee Quarterly Summary Report, with Form 350 used to amend a prior quarter. Payment must be received no later than 31 days after the close of the quarter, and can be made electronically through pay.gov. If you fall into one of those categories, that 31-day window is a hard deadline that arrives four times a year, so it belongs in a calendar rather than in someone's memory. Either way, the fee ends up itemized on paperwork that has to reconcile against what you actually paid, and importers running steady ocean volume generally push the entry and settlement records straight into QuickBooks instead of rekeying each quarter's charges by hand.

HMF versus MPF: the comparison that actually matters

These two get blurred constantly, so here they are side by side.

The practical consequence: on a small ocean entry the MPF minimum dominates and the HMF is trivial. On a large ocean entry the MPF hits its ceiling and the HMF, uncapped, overtakes it. A 2 million dollar container pays 651.50 dollars in MPF and 2,500 dollars in HMF. Any landed-cost model that treats both as small fixed costs will understate the total on exactly the shipments where the money is.

One timing note: the MPF caps quoted here are the fiscal year 2026 figures, effective October 1, 2025. CBP publishes the following year's adjustment in late July or early August, so the FY2027 minimum and maximum are due imminently and will take effect on October 1, 2026. The HMF rate will not change with them.

Putting it into your landed cost

A complete ocean import cost is the duty from your HTS code, plus any trade-remedy tariff that applies, plus MPF within its caps, plus HMF at 0.125 percent uncapped, plus freight, insurance and brokerage. Skipping the fee layer is one of the most common reasons a quoted landed cost comes in low. Classify the product first, because the duty rate is the largest and most variable piece, then add the fees on top. You can classify on the live classifier and build the full stack in the import duty calculator. For the companion fee, see the merchandise processing fee, and if you are importing from a country with trade-remedy exposure, check the Section 301 tariff list by product before you quote anything.

Frequently asked questions

What is the harbor maintenance fee?

The harbor maintenance fee is a US charge of 0.125 percent of the value of commercial cargo loaded onto or unloaded from a vessel at a federally maintained port. It funds the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which pays for dredging and port upkeep. It is authorized by 26 USC 4461 and collected by CBP under 19 CFR 24.24, and for importers it is collected as part of the normal entry process.

How much is the harbor maintenance fee in 2026?

The rate is 0.125 percent of cargo value, which works out to 1.25 dollars per 1,000 dollars of goods. It has been at that level since 1991 and is set by statute, so unlike the merchandise processing fee it is not adjusted for inflation each year. There is no minimum charge and no maximum, so the fee rises without limit as shipment value rises.

Does the harbor maintenance fee apply to air shipments?

No. The fee attaches only when cargo is loaded onto or unloaded from a commercial vessel at a covered port. Air, truck and rail shipments are outside the statute entirely, so no HMF is owed on them. This is why two shipments of identical goods can carry different fee lines: the ocean shipment has an HMF charge and the air shipment does not, even though both pay the merchandise processing fee.

Do exports pay the harbor maintenance fee?

No. In United States v. United States Shoe Corp. (1998), the Supreme Court unanimously held that charging the fee on exports violates the Export Clause of the Constitution, because a purely value-based charge does not fairly approximate the harbor services an exporter uses. Congress then amended the statute, and 26 USC 4462(d) now expressly excludes cargo to be exported. US exporters pay nothing.

Is the harbor maintenance fee the same as the merchandise processing fee?

No. They are separate charges under different statutes. The MPF is 0.3464 percent with a per-entry minimum and maximum and applies to any formal entry regardless of transport mode. The HMF is 0.125 percent, uncapped in both directions, and applies only to waterborne cargo. An ocean import typically pays both, plus duty; an air import pays MPF and duty but no HMF.

Who pays the harbor maintenance fee?

On imports, the importer of record is liable and the fee is collected at entry. On domestic port-to-port movements, the shipper who pays the freight is liable and the fee is charged once per movement. On passenger vessels, the operator is liable based on the fare. Domestic shippers, foreign trade zone applicants and passenger vessel operators report quarterly on CBP Form 349, due within 31 days of the quarter's close.