In a relatively modest week, regulators published $158 million in annualized costs and more than 235,000 associated paperwork burden hours; no regulation monetized possible benefits. However, the week did include notable court proceedings on the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank’s fourth anniversary.

Regulatory Toplines

• New Proposed Rules: 56
• New Final Rules: 74
• 2014 Significant Documents: 367
• 2014 Total Pages of Regulation: 43,525
• 2014 Proposed Rules: $48.4 Billion
• 2014 Final Rules: $56.8 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.

Highlights of the week include an FAA “airworthiness directive” with annualized costs of just over $100 million and a new set of disclosure requirements for establishments that grind raw beef which brings almost 230,000 hours of new paperwork. The beef grinding rule would require more than 76,000 establishments to record more information about who supplied their product.

Affordable Care Act

There were no notable heath care rulemakings this week. On Tuesday two appeals courts ruled on the legality of an IRS rule providing premium subsidies to federally-run exchange plans. In Halbig v. Burwell, the D.C. Circuit ruled that the statutory language only allowed for subsidies to state-based exchanges. AAF explained the case here.

However, just hours afterwards, the Fourth Circuit came down with a contravening ruling in another similar case: King v. Burwell. The exact implications are still uncertain, and many expect the Supreme Court to eventually rule on the issue.

Since passage, based on total lifetime costs of the regulations, the Affordable Care Act has imposed a cost of $27.5 billion in private-sector burdens, approximately $12.3 billion in costs to the states, and 159.2 million annual paperwork hours.

Dodd-Frank

While there were no notable rulemakings, this week saw Dodd-Frank enter its fifth year of existence. AAF marked the date with a paper looking back on its impact upon financial services, financial regulators, and general lending trends. In the past year alone, the law’s regulatory costs increased by roughly 41 percent.

Click here to view the total estimated compliance costs from Dodd-Frank; since passage, the legislation has produced more than 60.7 million paperwork burden hours and imposed $21.8 billion in direct compliance costs. Based on calculations from the Financial Services Roundtable, Dodd-Frank regulations would require 30,374 employees to file federal paperwork.

Total Burdens

Since January 1, the federal government has published $105.3 billion in compliance costs and has imposed 19.5 million in net paperwork burden hours. Click here for our comprehensive database of regulations and rulemakings promulgated in 2014.