Some companies hoping to claw back money from disputed tariffs aren’t waiting around for Washington.
Instead, they’re selling their rights to possible future refunds to outside investors — often at a steep discount — in a risky new twist that accountants say opens up a messy set of financial reporting questions.
Joseph Cascio, chief accountant at RSM US LLP, said some importers that may be entitled to refunds tied to tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, have been approached by investors willing to make a bet on whether the government will ever actually pay up.
“There are a number of companies to my knowledge that have been approached by investors that are willing to speculate and are willing to pay a discounted amount today,” Cascio said in an interview on March 17, 2026.
The pitch is simple: take cash now, give up the chance to collect more later.
Cascio described a scenario where a company that believes it’s owed $1 million in tariff refunds agrees to sell those rights for $300,000. If the government never sends the refund, the investor eats the loss — and the company still keeps the upfront money.
That may sound like an easy choice for businesses exhausted by court fights, appeals, and bureaucratic delays. But from an accounting standpoint, it’s anything but simple.
“To my knowledge, for those that have done this, I think they’re all being accounted for as some type of borrowing on their books, not as upfront gains,” Cascio said.
The deals are popping up as companies try to figure out what to do after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on February 20 that certain IEEPA tariffs were unlawful, then sent the matter back for further proceedings. The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) later issued a March 4 order directing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to take certain steps, but the refund path is still far from clear.
That uncertainty is exactly the problem.
No Refund Yet — So What Goes on the Books?
Cascio said the first big accounting question for companies is whether the recent court rulings are enough to justify putting a refund-related asset on the books.
“The primary question … is whether the Supreme Court’s ruling and the subsequent decision of the CIT on March 4th resulted in any events that require recognition in the financial statements,” he said.
Even if the answer is no, companies may still need to tell investors and other financial statement users about the issue in disclosures, he said.
Right now, there’s no specific U.S. GAAP rule that squarely covers these potential tariff refunds. So companies and their advisers are trying to fit the situation into existing accounting frameworks.
Cascio said two main approaches have emerged.
One is a gain contingency model, where a company generally would wait until the uncertainty is mostly gone — meaning Customs has acknowledged the amount to be refunded and the risk of appeal has largely passed.
The other is a loss recovery model, where a company might be able to book an asset earlier if it intends to recover the money, can reasonably estimate the amount, and believes collection is probable.
But Cascio said that, at least based on the uncertainty surrounding appeals, administrative hurdles, liquidation issues and the lack of a finalized refund process, most companies likely still aren’t there.
“Given all of the significant uncertainties concerning any potential refund process, I generally believe that the threshold for recognizing a receivable under either of those two approaches has not been met,” he said.
That hasn’t stopped some firms from trying to turn their possible claims into immediate cash.
In fact, Cascio said investors were already circling these claims before the Supreme Court ruling — sometimes offering just pennies on the dollar. Since the ruling, those offers have gone up, but still remain well below face value.
That discount may say a lot.
If the market is only willing to pay a fraction of a claim’s supposed value, that suggests investors themselves don’t view these refunds as close to certain — a key point when companies try to argue under GAAP that collection is “probable.”
Cascio warned that companies could get into trouble if they book refund assets too aggressively, or copy what peers are doing without fully understanding the accounting basis.
“I think the biggest mistake that a company can make is not considering what guidance exists or what might be appropriate guidance to analogize to and just perhaps recording what you think makes economic sense,” he said.
Turning a Possible Payout into Immediate Cash Has Its Own Complications
For companies thinking about selling their refund rights, the accounting may be even murkier.
If a refund receivable has already been recognized, there may be a clearer accounting model for transferring that asset. But if no receivable has been booked and the company simply sells its rights to a possible future refund, Cascio said the treatment becomes much less clear.
That’s why he said companies — especially public ones — should loop in auditors, accounting advisers and possibly even the Securities and Exchange Commission before moving ahead.
For now, the bottom line is this: some businesses would rather take a discounted payout today than gamble on a larger refund that may never come. But what looks like a smart cash move in the real world may still be a headache in the accounting world.
[RSM, which published a report on the financial reporting implications of tariffs last year, released an updated analysis in March reflecting recent court rulings. Click here for the report.]
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