After a huge week for regulatory costs, the past few days were relatively tame. Regulators published $14.6 million in annualized costs, compared to no quantified benefits. Paperwork was the highlight this week, with more than 380,000 burden hours.        

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 35
• New Final Rules: 86
• 2014 Significant Documents: 315
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 36,628
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $48 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $50.5 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 administration proposed amendments to the Family and Medical Leave Act. The measure amends the definition of “spouse,” allowing leave based on an employee’s same-sex marriage. The administration estimates minimal costs, mostly related to paperwork and required notices to employees.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is modernizing its Form 447 Data Program. It will now include data on fixed and mobile broadband networks. According to the current collection of information, the paperwork burden will jump by roughly 377,000 hours.   

Affordable Care Act

There were no notable ACA regulations this week. Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed an estimated cost of $27.5 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $8 billion in costs to the states, and 159.2 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

There were no notable Dodd-Frank regulations this week. Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 60.4 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $21.7 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 30,211 employees to file federal paperwork.

A Note on Notices

There were 505 notices published in the Federal Register this week. However, there were no particularly notable actions.

The Office of Management and Budget approved 57 paperwork requirements, increasing paperwork burden hours by 43,098 hours. There were two major changes to existing paperwork requirements (defined as an hourly burden increase or decrease of 500,000 or greater).  

The largest increase in paperwork burden hours imposed by an information collection requirement (ICR) was 753,830 hours from IRS. The largest decrease in paperwork burden hours imposed by an ICR was (770,495) hours, also from IRS.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $98.6 billion in compliance costs and has imposed more than 14 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.