Increases to APHIS AQI Fees to Begin Taking Effect Oct. 1
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is moving forward with increased user fees for its agricultural quarantine and inspection service, it said last week. Announced in a pre-publication final rule released by APHIS, the fee increases will begin to apply on Oct. 1.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The largest fee increase will apply to commercial vessels, which will see an increase from the current $825 to $2,903.73 on Oct. 1. That fee will continue to rise, to $2,981.17 on Oct. 1, 2025, then to $3,059.61 on Oct. 1, 2026, and to $3,139.06 on Oct. 1, 2027.
APHIS also is removing a fee exemption for Canadian barges. It’s setting a new fee for commercial vessels on the Great Lakes and in Cascadia of $837.51, gradually rising over the next three years to $875.06 by October 2027.
The fee increases are needed “to allow the AQI program to recover the full costs of carrying out” its activities to safeguard U.S. farms and forests “from the impacts that damaging invasive pests and destructive diseases cause,” APHIS said. “In recent years, the fees collected during AQI inspections have not recovered the full costs of the program.”
“Recent advances in the size and scope of commercial transportation have resulted in the need for APHIS to adjust these fees to account for the corresponding increase in cost of operations. The revisions to user fees will put the AQI program on sound financial footing,” the agency said.
Fees for commercial trucks will rise from the current $7.29 to $12.40 on Oct. 1, and continue rising annually, to $15.55 by October 2027. Fees for commercial rail will increase from $2 to $6.51 on Oct. 1, and up to $8.72 in October 2027. Commercial aircraft fees will increase from $225 to $281.39 on Oct. 1, and continue to increase annually, to $340.90 in October 2027.
APHIS also is “adjusting the caps on prepaid fees associated with commercial trucks and commercial railroad cars,” and “removing certain fee exemptions that are no longer justifiable based upon pathway analyses of risk.”
APHIS said it also will “require monthly rather than quarterly remittances for the commercial aircraft fee, international air passenger fee, and international cruise passenger fee” and “provide for electronic payments and statements.”