Drawback Expertise Leads to Greater Efficiency and Profits

Client

A European manufacturer and installer of large-scale wind farms and turbines.

Challenge

After being introduced to the concept of duty drawback, the customer held a formal bidding process for drawback services. Ultimately, their management team opted to set the program up with their existing accounting firm, one of the “big four.” Over a year later, the customer contacted JMR, stating that they believed they had made the wrong decision. On several matters, their accounting firm, not being experts in the nuances of drawback, had given them bad advice about the one-time waiver and waiver for future exports, leading to missing out on some past exports.

The nature of their business prohibited the accounting firm from charging a customary percentage of the claims refunded, so it charged high hourly rates instead. This led to the filing of unnecessary rulings and extraneous requests. Additionally, frequent turnover on their representative team led to significant delays and multiple restarts. Crunching the numbers, the client found that in the year in which nearly no progress was made, they paid out more than they would have paid JMR for the entire clean-up process.

Solution

JMR was brought on board and filed the applications within weeks. Seeing that some of the requested rulings were unnecessary, we went ahead and processed claims that were pending approval of our applications. Our data experts, experienced in the specific nuances of drawback, assisted them with some of the issues plaguing their program from the beginning, leading to expedited claims and the considerably faster filing of all necessary documents.

Results

J.M. Rodgers secured seven-figure returns within six months at a fee less than they had paid for a year of fruitless consulting.