DutyCounter™ — Recover Every Duty-Drawback Dollar You're Owed

The drawback story

The money is real. The data trail is the problem.

Duty drawback lets carriers reclaim the import duties paid on fuel that leaves the country in an aircraft's tanks. It's legitimate, sizeable, and routinely left on the table — because the proof is buried in paper.

Why it goes unclaimed

Refundable fuel, unprovable on paper

Drawback claims demand a clean, defensible link from the imported gallon to the international flight that burned it. For most fuel teams that evidence lives in handwritten ramp tickets, supplier invoices, FMS feeds and schedules that never line up. The work to assemble it by hand costs more than the refund — so the claim never gets filed.

Import basis sits in supplier records; uplifts sit in ramp tickets
International eligibility hinges on the actual flight, not the plan
Manual matching is slow, error-prone and audit-fragile
Result: real refunds expire unfiled, year after year

How DutyCounter™ solves it

One audited ledger, drawback-ready

DutyCounter™ reads the clean, audited record that FuelScanner™ captures and FuelCounter™ validates — every uplift already tied to a real flight. It flags the international uplifts, matches each to its import-duty basis, assembles the eligible transactions, and produces a filing-ready drawback report you can submit to customs with the evidence attached.

Inherits the validated ledger — no new data entry
Auto-identifies international uplifts eligible for drawback
Each transaction traceable back to its source document
Filed direct, with the audit trail customs expects

Eligible-transaction report

From audited uplifts to a refund total

DutyCounter™ surfaces each drawback-eligible transaction with the gallons, the import-duty basis, and the dollars you can reclaim — rolled up into one recovered total, ready to file.

Eligible-transaction reportDutyCounter™ · Q2 sample · DRWBK-2026-0612

Recovered this period

Flight	Date	Airport	Gallons	Import duty basis	Eligible $	Status
DL 142 · JFK→LHR	04 Apr	JFK	38,420	$0.244 / gal	$9,374	Eligible
UA 880 · SFO→FRA	07 Apr	SFO	52,160	$0.244 / gal	$12,727	Eligible
AA 100 · JFK→LHR	12 Apr	JFK	41,980	$0.244 / gal	$10,243	Eligible
LH 419 · IAD→MUC	15 Apr	IAD	47,310	$0.244 / gal	$11,544	Eligible
EK 204 · JFK→DXB	19 Apr	JFK	61,540	$0.244 / gal	$15,016	Eligible
AF 023 · ORD→CDG	23 Apr	ORD	44,870	$0.244 / gal	$10,948	Eligible

286,280 eligible gallons 6 of 6 transactions matched to import basis 100% source-document traceable Output: customs-ready drawback claim

The recovery workflow

Five steps, from uplift to refund

DutyCounter™ runs entirely on the audited ledger — each step is automated, evidenced and ready to defend.

Identify

Identify international uplifts

Scan the validated ledger for fuel uploaded domestically and burned on flights that leave the country — the uplifts that carry drawback eligibility.

Match

Match to import basis

Tie each eligible uplift to the supplier record and import-duty basis for the fuel it drew from, so the refundable amount is grounded in real figures.

Assemble

Assemble eligible transactions

Build the line-item set — flight, date, airport, gallons, basis and eligible dollars — each linked back to its source document for audit.

Generate

Generate the drawback report

Roll the transactions into a customs-ready claim with the supporting evidence and a clear recovered total.

File

File with customs

Submit the claim direct to the customs authority, with the full audit trail attached — and track it through to refund.

Why DutyCounter™

Recover more, prove all of it, file it for real

Maximize recovery

By working the complete validated ledger instead of a manual sample, DutyCounter™ surfaces every eligible international uplift — the claims that used to slip through stay in the refund total.

Audit-ready evidence

Each transaction traces to its source ticket, invoice and flight record. When customs asks for proof, it's already attached — defensible by design.

Filed direct

DutyCounter™ doesn't stop at a spreadsheet. It generates the customs-ready claim and files it direct, then tracks the refund — no broker hand-off, no dropped follow-up.

Specifications

What's eligible, what it needs, what comes out

What's eligible	Imported Jet-A uplifted domestically and consumed on international flights — the import duties on that exported fuel are refundable as drawback.
Data required	The audited FuelDeck™ ledger: validated uplift tickets, supplier invoices with import-duty basis, and actual flight records — all already in FuelScanner™ + FuelCounter™.
Matching	Each eligible uplift linked to its import basis and the international flight that burned it, with full source-document traceability.
Output format	Customs-ready drawback claim plus the line-item eligible-transaction report (flight, date, airport, gallons, basis, eligible $); CSV export for your own records.
Filing	Filed direct with the customs authority, audit trail attached, tracked through to refund.
Security	Google Cloud / Firebase, SOC 2, TLS 1.3 + AES-256, per-tenant Firestore isolation, 99.95% SLA.

FAQ

Duty drawback, answered

What exactly is fuel duty drawback?

When imported Jet-A is loaded onto an aircraft and burned on an international flight, that fuel effectively leaves the country. The import duties originally paid on it become refundable — that refund is duty drawback. DutyCounter™ identifies those uplifts and assembles the claim.

Do I need FuelScanner™ and FuelCounter™ first?

Yes — DutyCounter™ runs on the clean, audited ledger those modules produce. The eligibility and the dollar amounts are only as defensible as the underlying record, which is why drawback is the third step in the FuelDeck™ pipeline: capture, validate, then recover.

How does it know which uplifts are eligible?

It cross-references each validated uplift against the actual flight that consumed it. Fuel burned on an international flight from imported stock is flagged eligible, then matched to its import-duty basis from the supplier record — all automatically, all traceable.

Does DutyCounter™ actually file the claim, or just prepare it?

It does both. DutyCounter™ generates the customs-ready drawback report and files it direct with the customs authority, with the audit trail attached, then tracks it through to refund — not just a spreadsheet you have to hand off.

Claim every drawback dollar you're already owed