‘Like trying to get Taylor Swift tickets': Nebraska businesses struggle with tariff refund system

(Photo by Alexander Schimmeck/Unsplash)

By Noelle Annonen, Nebraska Public Media

(April 28, 2026)

Nebraska business owners are joining others across the country in applying for their share of more than $166 billion in tariff refunds. But while local businesses and consumers alike have shouldered extra costs from tariffs, few if any are eligible for the refunds.

Tariffs are taxes on international imports, many of which were unveiled by President Donald Trump last spring. Megan Hunt, a Nebraska state senator and small retailer based in Omaha, said she was expecting an increase in operating costs due to tariffs. Many of her clothing, notepads and paper goods are imported from other countries.

“One thing I love about independent retail is that you can give your customers an experience where they can get goods from all over the world that they would never normally find in Omaha, Nebraska,” Hunt said.

Hunt was expecting a bill of a couple hundred dollars when tariffs first started coming back to bite businesses last spring. She believed she could manage with several bills that size. But the very first of them packed a punch.

“I had a tariff bill over $2,000,” Hunt said. “It was like getting the wind knocked out of you.”

Over the last year, Hunt said tariffs cost her business more than $16,000. And her attempts to recoup those losses through refund applications came up empty.

“It’s like trying to get Taylor Swift tickets when the Eras Tour popped up,” Jason Ball, president of the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce, said.

Ball said many Nebraska businesses and businesses across the country will be seeking their share of the refunds, adding that the portal to apply for refunds only opened a week ago. The process is expected to be complicated and will likely take a long time. As tariffs added up over the last year, Ball said some businesses pivoted and found new places to get their products without having to pay the additional import costs. Others passed the additional costs down to the consumer. But some struggled.

“It’s been a very uncertain environment,” Ball said. “Predictably, we had a lot of great Lincoln companies that are exactly the type of corporations we want in Nebraska. Yet they are being hindered by having to pay tariff rates on anything they’re importing.”

We Pay the Tariffs, an organized group of small-business owners across the country, estimates Nebraska importers paid more than $480 million in tariffs from spring 2025 through spring this year.

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of families that are hurting right now,” said Angie Lauritsen, director of Nebraska For Us, a nonprofit focused on economic policy. “Nebraska businesses over the last year… many had to decrease staff. They had to let people go. They ended up closing.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February that the tariffs levied by Trump were illegal, and it ordered the administration to return collected tariffs to American businesses. But Hunt said that while she kept receipts for her tariff-related costs, she was not able to apply for a refund. She called the process needlessly complex, almost as if it was intentionally designed to discourage applicants.

“I honestly have zero faith that I’m going to get the money back,” Hunt said.