CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

There were no major regulations this week, but more than 80 little ones, covering everything from a religious exemption to the federal tanning tax to imported cotton.

On to the data:

• Last week, 86 new final regulations were published in the Federal Register. There were 78 new final rules the previous week.
• That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every one hour and 57 minutes.
• So far in 2014, 1,670 final regulations have been published in the Federal Register. At that pace, there will be a total of 3,367 new regulations this year. This would be the lowest total in decades; this will likely change as the year goes on.
• Last week, 1,149 new pages were added to the Federal Register.
• Currently at 36,584 pages, the 2014 Federal Register is on pace for 73,759 pages, which would be the lowest total since 2009.
• Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. Nineteen such rules have been published so far this year, none of them in the past week.
• The total estimated compliance costs of 2014’s economically significant regulations currently ranges from $2.33 billion to $2.72 billion. They also affect several billion dollars of government spending.
• One-hundred and forty final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” have been published so far this year.
• So far in 2014, 315 new rules affect small businesses; 46 of them are classified as significant. 

Highlights from selected final rules published last week:

• The Food and Nutrition Service updated its information collection procedures for school lunches.
• The Agricultural Marketing Service has adjusted its tax on imported cotton.
• You may have heard of the Snooki tax, which taxes tanning bed use and other indoor tanning services. The IRS has implemented a religious exemption from the tanning tax.
• Now that it’s 2014, the Social Security Administration has devised a way for its form SSA-538 to be submitted electronically.
• It was another busy week for the Coast Guard, with another 24 final regulations this week, again mostly dealing with fireworks shows and drawbridge schedules.
• If you’re planning on exporting old-fashioned cathode ray tubes, check with the EPA first.
• The EPA also withdrew a final regulation for combustion turbine alternative control requirements for the Milwaukee-Racine area in Wisconsin.
• The Philippine cockatoo, yellow-crested cockatoo, and the white cockatoo are now endangered species.

For more data, see Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10KC and @RegoftheDay on Twitter.