About HTSAlert
HTSAlert is a continuous US import-tariff monitoring service for small and mid-size importers and licensed customs brokers. You add the HTS codes you import under; we watch the official tariff data every day and alert you the moment a duty rate on one of your codes changes — with the old and new rate, the effective date, the governing trade action, and the Chapter 99 (9903) subheading you need for your entry summary.
Where our rates come from
Every rate on HTSAlert is derived from primary US government sources — never a third-party aggregator:
- USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule — the official HTS REST API provides the MFN (general) duty rate, column-2 rate, special (FTA) rates, and the trade-action footnotes for each 10-digit code.
- Federal Register — the authoritative source for the effective dates and legal basis of Section 301, Section 232, and IEEPA tariff actions.
How we compute the stacked rate
A single HTS code’s true landed duty is rarely just the base rate. Trade-action duties live in Chapter 99 (the 9903.xx.xx subheadings) and are referenced from the base code’s footnotes. For every code we resolve those footnotes, look up each 9903 overlay, and apply the correct stacking rules — Section 301 (China-specific), Section 232 (steel/aluminum/copper, mutually exclusive with Section 122), and IEEPA — to produce the total effective rate. We track two dates for every change: the legal effective date from the Federal Register and the detection date of our daily run.
Correctness is the product
A wrong rate or effective date destroys trust instantly, so correctness is treated as the core feature, not a nicety. Each ingestion run is validated against a set of broker-verified reference codes before any alert is sent, and a mass-change circuit breaker suppresses delivery if an unusually large share of codes appears to change at once (a signal of upstream format drift rather than real policy change). When we are not confident, we flag rather than deliver a number that could be wrong.
Update cadence
HTSAlert re-checks every watched code once per day (02:00 UTC), matching the cadence at which official tariff data is published. Alerts are delivered by email and — on the Pro plan — Telegram, with an in-app feed as the permanent record. Pro subscribers can export a timestamped CSV audit trail of every change per code.
Who runs it
HTSAlert is built and operated by Vladimir Boldyrev, an independent founder building focused software for specialized trades. Questions or corrections about a specific rate are welcome — accuracy reports directly improve the product.
HTSAlert is informational only and is not customs or legal advice. We do not file customs entries. Always verify duty treatment with a licensed customs broker before making compliance decisions.