The pace that regulators set last week slowed, with $121 million in total burdens. Annual costs were $58.6 million, compared to $18.4 million in benefits; paperwork accelerated by more than 127,000 hours. A Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposal implementing Dodd-Frank led the week.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 36
• New Final Rules: 46
• 2015 Significant Documents: 932
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 28,152
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $24.9 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $42.1 Billion

AAF has catalogued regulations according to their codification in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). The CFR is organized into 50 titles, with each title corresponding to an industry or part of government. This snapshot will help to determine which sectors of the economy receive the highest number of regulatory actions.

The Department of Defense and two other agencies released an acquisition regulation to avoid Hydrofluorocarbons, compounds that have a high global warming potential. This acquisition directive attempts to meet the goals of Executive Order 13,693, which plans to reduce federal greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent over the next decade. Although the acquisition regulation has no monetized costs, it could impose more than 25,000 paperwork hours.    

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $43.8 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 164.8 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

The SEC issued a proposal covering “Security-Based Swap Transactions Connected with Non-U.S. Persons.” The measure addresses the de minimis exception to swap transactions with non-U.S. persons and the SEC is adding a reporting requirement for transactions that are arranged by non-U.S. persons. The measure could cost more than $100 million and impose 78,000 paperwork burden hours.

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 65.8 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $33.4 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations assuming a 2,000-hour work year, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 32,900 employees to file federal paperwork annually.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $67 billion in compliance costs ($42.1 billion in final rules) and has imposed 23.3 million in net paperwork burden hours (5.79 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.