Covered goods · Hardware
Import builders’ or door hardware? You’ve been paying a 25% surtax you can claim back.
Steel hinges, locks, brackets, hangers, latches, and the builders’ hardware sold by the case fall under Canada’s steel surtax orders. Ottawa publishes refund programs for them that almost nobody uses. We audit your last 24 months of entries and prepare every claim you’re owed, for one flat fee. You keep 100%.
If we find nothing, it costs you nothing.
A 15-minute call with the founder, then a free scan of a transaction report from your own CARM portal that shows the surtax you paid and the range that looks recoverable, before you pay anything. Fees start at $2,495 CAD, backed by the 5x guarantee.
Every qualifying entry, its order, its authority code. Ready to file.
| Entry | Order cited | Recoverable |
|---|---|---|
| 14782-031 | SOR/2026-34 | $31,500 |
| 14782-117 | SOR/2025-122 | $18,240 |
| 14783-009 | K32 drawback | $9,615 |
| every qualifying entry, line by line | … | |
| Identified (illustrative) | $100,000 | |
The free look shows what you paid and the recoverable range. This shows every entry, its order, and its code, the part that gets filed. Illustrative sample.
Surtax coverage figure: Department of Finance Canada
The covered goods
Do you import any of these?
Hardware importers move huge SKU counts at high frequency, so the 25% hides across thousands of line items. If you bring in any of these, the surtax is on them.
Builders’ & door hardware
- Hinges, locks & latches
- Brackets, hangers & connectors
- Door & gate hardware
- Shelf brackets & mounting hardware
- Joist hangers & structural connectors
- Cabinet & furniture hardware
Often on the same containers
- Screws, bolts, nuts & washers
- Pallet racking & shelving
- Fabricated structural steel
- Chain-link & welded-mesh fencing
- Metal-frame seating & office furniture
The detail
Why builders’ and door hardware importers are sitting on unclaimed refunds
The charge that’s recoverable here is not the standard MFN duty on your goods. It’s a separate 25% surtax that Ottawa imposed on steel derivative goods under the Steel Derivative Goods Surtax Order (SOR/2025-267), which took effect December 26, 2025 and applies regardless of where your goods were manufactured. Hardware made in China, Taiwan, or elsewhere is caught just as fully as US-origin product.
On your CBSA accounting documents, this surtax appears as a distinct duty line alongside the ordinary tariff classification charges. Because licensed customs brokers are paid to classify and clear shipments correctly, not to monitor evolving remission orders, the entry gets filed, the surtax gets paid, and no one files the follow-on claim. That follow-on claim is what FlatClaim prepares: a per-entry correction that applies the special authority code for the Steel Derivative Goods Surtax Remission Order (SOR/2026-34), telling CBSA to credit the surtax back to your account.
Hardware importers face a particular version of this problem. High SKU counts mean the surtax accumulates across dozens of line items inside a single Commercial Accounting Declaration. A pallet of mixed door hardware, shelf brackets, and joist hangers might generate surtax charges on every product code in the shipment. Multiply that by weekly or bi-weekly container arrivals and the unclaimed total grows quickly. At 25% of dutiable value, a $2M annual hardware import programme carries roughly $500,000 in surtax per year. The two-year claim window means entries cleared in December 2025 start expiring in December 2027, and each subsequent month of imports adds another month that will eventually lapse if no claim is filed.
Every regulation above links to its official Government of Canada page. Don’t take our word for any of it.
Your exposure
How much surtax are you sitting on?
Drag to your rough annual import of covered goods. The surtax is 25% of that value, so the arithmetic is simple. Illustrative, not a quote. Your real number comes from your entries.
Two years of it is still claimable, and a portion is recoverable. The free look shows you how much.
See if you’re owedThe math
What the money looks like
A typical $2M a year of imported builders’ and door hardware, worked all the way through. Illustrative, on the Standard tier.
That money isn’t hypothetical. It’s surtax you already paid, sitting on the government’s side of the ledger. Refunds arrive as credits or payments on your CBSA account, applied first against anything you owe CBSA. The only question is whether it gets claimed before the window closes.
Under the old industry model, a 25% contingency, that same recovery would have cost you $25,000. Our fee is flat and published, so the math stays this lopsided at every volume. See the full pricing and the 5x guarantee.
Your real number comes from your real entries.
See if you’re owedThe deadline
The window is closing. For real, not as a sales line.
Refund claims must be made within two years of each importation. The surtax started in March 2025, which means your earliest entries become unclaimable in early 2027. After that, another month of refunds expires every month, permanently. There’s no countdown clock on this page because the statute doesn’t need one.
And if the tariffs get lifted in a trade deal? Past overpayments remain refundable within the two-year window. A deal stops future surtax; it doesn’t return what you already paid.
Your oldest entries expire first. From early 2027, another month of refunds becomes unclaimable every month.
Start before they doThe process
How it works
Four steps. The first is free: you see your number before you commit a dollar, and the 5x guarantee covers the rest. You never need to understand CARM, CADs, or authority codes. Day markers are typical, not promises.
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1
Free
The free look
Day 0 to 3A 15-minute call, then we read a transaction report you pull from your own CARM portal. You see the surtax you’ve paid on covered entries and the range that looks recoverable, the size of the prize. The how (which orders, which codes, how to file) is the work, and it starts at the audit. No account access, no NDA, no fee. New to the portal? Our CARM guide walks you through it.
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2
The recovery audit
Day 3 to 10The work the free look can’t do. We examine all 24 months entry by entry and decide which federal program recovers each one. A wrong code, or an entry that doesn’t truly qualify, bounces the whole claim. Knowing which is which is what you’re paying for. You engage at half the fee; we sign an NDA and you delegate read-only CARM access.
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3
The filing-ready package
Day 10 to 20Not a report of what you might be owed. The instrument that gets it back: the exact authority code for every qualifying entry, prepared K32s, documentary support, ready to transmit. Hand it to your broker or self-file in CARM and it pays out. White Glove: we coordinate it for you.
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4
Money in your account
Day 90 to 120The point of all of it. Refunds post to your CBSA account, with interest if CBSA runs late. Your broker files, or you self-file. You stay in control the whole way.
The 5x guarantee. If the audit doesn’t identify at least 5x our fee in recoverable surtax, your half-payment comes back in full and you keep the findings. The free look already cost you nothing.
Questions
Questions about builders’ & door hardware refunds
My broker clears all my shipments. Why wouldn’t they have caught this?
Your broker’s mandate is accurate tariff classification and timely clearance, which they handle well. Monitoring published remission orders and filing post-entry corrections to recover surtax is a separate workflow that most brokerages don’t offer as part of standard service. The remission order for steel derivative goods, SOR/2026-34, was only published in early 2026, so many brokers haven’t yet built a practice around it. FlatClaim prepares the filing-ready package; your own broker (or CARM self-filing) then transmits it.
We source hardware from China and Taiwan, not the US. Are we still covered?
Yes. The surtax that applies to your shipments is SOR/2025-267, the Steel Derivative Goods Surtax Order. It applies to steel-based goods imported from every country of origin, not only the United States. Country of origin does not affect your eligibility for the remission order, SOR/2026-34.
We import hundreds of SKUs per container. How does FlatClaim handle that volume?
That’s precisely the kind of import profile FlatClaim is built for. We read the transaction report you pull from your own CARM portal, work through the surtax charged at the line-item level, and produce a per-entry correction package that your broker or you can transmit through CARM. The flat fee covers the full scope of covered entries, regardless of SKU count or number of shipments within your import volume tier.
What if CBSA rejects the claim?
FlatClaim’s workmanship warranty covers that outcome. If CBSA rejects a claim we prepared, we correct it and refile at no additional charge. The fee you paid stays paid; the work continues until the filing is accepted or we’ve exhausted the available remission authority.
More in plain-English answers and the main FAQ.
See if you’re owed on your hardware imports.
Send Jon what you import and he’ll come back with a straight read on your tier, your likely exposure, and whether the numbers clear the 5x bar for your volume. That’s the founder replying, not an SDR or a call centre. The first look is free, with no account access and no fee.
or, if you’re ready now
Prefer email? jon@flatclaim.com