Regulators wasted no time emerging from the July 4 holiday by publishing more than $2.1 billion in costs. Annualized burdens were $389 million, compared to $182 million in benefits; paperwork accelerated by 1.4 million hours. The administration’s proposal expanding overtime led the week. The current regulatory burden for the year stands just $1.8 billion away from the $100 billion threshold.                      

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 40
• New Final Rules: 56
• 2015 Total Pages of Regulation: 39,940
• 2015 Proposed Rules: $38.2 Billion
• 2015 Final Rules: $59.9 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 to roughly double the income threshold for receiving overtime pay and benefits, which would allow one million workers to collect more in wages and benefits. In addition to the billions of dollars in transfers from employers to employees, the proposal estimates roughly $265 million in annual direct costs to employers ($2 billion over ten years). There are also roughly 230,000 paperwork hours associated with the rulemaking.

The Department of Education published its “Pay as You Earn” proposal aimed at easing student loan repayment for borrowers. The proposed rule would add more than 1.1 million paperwork burden hours and almost $6 million in associated costs. In addition, the federal government admits the proposal will cost taxpayers $15.3 billion.  

Affordable Care Act

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed costs of $44 billion in state and private-sector burdens and 164.8 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 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 annual

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $98.2 billion in compliance costs ($59.9 billion in final rules) and has imposed 32.7 million in net paperwork burden hours (6.35 million from final rules). Click below for the latest Reg Rodeo findings.