.svg)
.svg){kind=icon}
As of June 1, 2026, the document that declares the customs value of your imports is no longer a paper formality your customs broker files on your behalf. The Manifestación de Valor Electrónica (MVE) — Mexico's electronic value declaration — is now mandatory for every importer of record, transmitted through the Ventanilla Única de Comercio Exterior (VUCEM, Mexico's single-window trade platform) and signed with your own e.firma. Not your broker's. Yours.
That signature is the whole story. The legal basis did not change — Article 59, fracción III of the Ley Aduanera has always placed the value declaration on the importer. What changed on June 1 is that the obligation is now electronic, attributable, and enforced at transmission. The pen is in your hand, and the file behind it has to hold. An operation that still treats the value declaration as something the broker quietly handles is not preparing for a change — it is already operating under one.
Here is exactly what changed, where this lands inside your organization, and the sequence to run before your next import clears under the new rule.
What actually changed on June 1
The shift comes down to four concrete changes. Each one is a new line of responsibility on the importer's side.
1️⃣ The Manifestación de Valor is now electronic and mandatory. It is transmitted through VUCEM using the Formato E2 (the electronic value declaration form in Anexo 1 of the RGCE — Reglas Generales de Comercio Exterior, Mexico's general foreign-trade rules), before contributions are paid. The old paper “hoja de cálculo” version is retired, and the coexistence period that let importers keep using the physical format ended May 31. There is no longer a parallel option.
2️⃣ The importer signs — the broker does not. The MVE is transmitted and signed with the importer's e.firma (or a Certificado de Sello Digital enabled for VUCEM). Under the prior scheme the agente aduanal actively built and effectively owned the document. Under Regla 1.5.1 of the RGCE, the legal authorship of the value declaration is the importer's, and the e.firma makes that authorship explicit and traceable to a single responsible party.
3️⃣ Value detail is per-invoice, through COVE — not aggregated totals. The information must be tied to each commercial invoice via the COVE (Comprobante de Valor Electrónico, the electronic value record), not summarized as a single lump figure. Only one valuation method may be declared per COVE — the one of greatest monetary impact — and the incrementables and decrementables (the additions and deductions to value: freight, insurance, royalties, commissions) must be detailed against the applicable INCOTERM.
4️⃣ The file behind the declaration has to survive a value review. The MVE is not a standalone form; it is the visible tip of an electronic expediente. The supporting documentation — invoice, contract, transport document, and the rest specified in Article 81 of the Reglamento de la Ley Aduanera — must back both the declared value and the chosen valuation method, and be kept in digital form for five years under Article 30 of the CFF (Código Fiscal de la Federación, the federal tax code).
Four changes, one direction: the value declaration stopped being paperwork the broker handles and became a signed obligation the importer owns.
This is one move in a larger reform
The MVE did not arrive on its own. It is part of the 2026 customs reform thread that has steadily relocated responsibility onto the importer of record and pushed the entire value record into a verifiable electronic expediente. Article 59 of the Ley Aduanera now frames both the value declaration (fracción III) and the electronic expediente (fracción V) as the importer's standing obligations, retrievable on demand by the authority.
The transition timeline shows how deliberately the change was staged. The obligation was first set for December 2025, moved to April 1, 2026, and then extended a final time to June 1, 2026 through the Primera Resolución de Modificaciones a las RGCE 2026, published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación on March 30, 2026, together with the corresponding Transitorio Décimo Primero. Each extension bought preparation time. None of them softened the obligation. And the relief from penalties for inexact data that applied during the transition no longer shields a careless declaration now that the scheme is fully in force.
Why this lands on the Trade Director's desk — not the broker's
Here is the part most operations underestimate. The MVE looks like a procedural change. It is an organizational one.
When the signature on the value declaration is the importer's e.firma, the work of getting that declaration right can no longer live entirely with the broker. Someone inside your organization has to own the valuation logic, the per-COVE method selection, the incrementable detail, and the expediente that backs it. That someone is the Trade Director or the Operations Manager — not the customs broker who used to hold the pen.
In our work across more than 190,000 customs operations a year at 39+ ports on both sides of the border, the value declarations that survive a review are almost never the ones assembled at the moment of clearance. They are the ones where the importer's team had already decided how value is built — method, adjustments, supporting documents — before the cargo moved. The signature only formalizes a discipline that was already in place. Where that discipline does not exist, the e.firma simply attaches a responsible name to a file that will not hold.
If no one in your organization can say today whose e.firma signs your MVE and where the per-COVE value file lives, that is the gap to close this week. A Manifestación de Valor readiness review — run against your last several operations before a value review does it for you — is exactly the kind of check a Joffroy expert can walk through with your team.
The sequence to run this week
The first weeks of mandatory transmission are where reprocesos — rejected transmissions and re-filings that stall clearance — accumulate. The way to avoid them is to verify the chain end to end, in order.
→ Confirm the signature. Make sure the e.firma (or VUCEM-enabled Certificado de Sello Digital) that will sign your MVE is active, current, and held by someone authorized to declare value. An expired or wrong-holder e.firma stops the transmission before anything else matters.
→ Map your scope. Confirm which of your operations require an MVE per operation and which fall under a facilidad — OEA-certified companies (Operador Económico Autorizado) and holders of automotive depósito fiscal authorization transmit only on requirement, not on every operation. Knowing your scope tells you where the daily burden actually falls.
→ Build the value file at COVE level. For each commercial invoice, fix the single valuation method of greatest monetary impact and detail the incrementables and decrementables against the INCOTERM. This is the work that used to be improvised at the border; under the MVE it has to be structured before transmission.
→ Close the loop to the pedimento. The folio generated on transmission must be declared on the pedimento in Registro 507 with the ED identifier, before payment of contributions. A transmitted MVE that never reaches the pedimento is an electronic inconsistency waiting to be flagged in an automated review.
→ Lock the expediente. Assemble the supporting documents per Article 81 of the Reglamento de la Ley Aduanera and set the five-year digital retention now — not when an audit asks for it.
Each link is small. A broken one is a held shipment.
Where transmission discipline becomes an operational advantage
The MVE rewards operations that treat value as a maintained system rather than a clearance-day scramble. That is a process and technology question as much as a compliance one: a transmission that lands clean every time, a value file built per-COVE before the cargo moves, and an audit trail that can reconstruct any declaration on demand. It is the layer our own platforms — JoffroyOS and TradeShield — are built to enforce, and the layer 122 years at this border have taught us matters most at the moment a declaration is finally tested.
The operations that adjust to the MVE quietly are the ones building that discipline in June. The ones that meet it at the border — transmission by rejected transmission — will spend the summer learning the same lesson the slower, more expensive way.
From June 1, the signature on your value declaration is yours. The only question that matters this week is the one you should be able to answer without calling your broker: when that signature is tested in a value review, will the file behind it hold?
