The shortened holiday week produced a modest number of new regulations. Annual costs were just $151 million, with no comparable benefit figures; paperwork accelerated by more than 500,000 hours. An EPA proposal on refrigerant management, designed to reduce the release of ozone-depleting substances, led the week. The per capita regulatory burden for 2015 is $561.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 34
• New Final Rules: 44
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 70,668
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $90.6 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $90.1 Billion

The American Action Forum (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.

EPA proposed a rule to amend standards related to the release of ozone-depleting substances. The measure strengthens leak repair requirements and establishes recordkeeping requirements for the disposal of up to 50 pounds of refrigerant. EPA forecasts the rulemakings to not only limit the release of ozone-depleting substances, but also limit greenhouse gases. The recordkeeping portions of the rule help to generate more than 475,000 paperwork burden hours. However, net costs are minimal, at just $11 million annually.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a proposal to modernize exemptions for registering intrastate securities. SEC is also proposing to amend Rule 504 of Regulation D under the Securities Act. The proposal would “increase the aggregate amount of securities that may be offered and sold in any twelve-month period from $1 million to $5 million and disqualify certain bad actors.” Costs for this rulemaking, mostly related to paperwork, are $30.6 million.

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $47.9 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 165.9 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

Click here to view the total estimated revised costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 75.5 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $34.3 billion in direct compliance costs.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $180.7 billion in compliance costs ($90.1 billion in final rules) and has imposed 98.7 million in net paperwork burden hours (47.7 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.