The Trump Administration recently released the results of its fiscal year 2019 regulatory budget, showing a third consecutive year of net savings. Yet a lack of transparency in the administration’s accounting puts at risk the durability of its regulatory reforms, argues AAF’s Director of Regulatory Policy Dan Bosch. Including the value of each action in the budget total is one way to increase transparency when calculating the regulatory savings, he notes.

An excerpt:

A few specific examples show that the status of actions can change, with notable effects on the regulatory budget. In February the Internal Revenue Service published a rule implementing the Qualified Business Income Deduction, a major provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Under the section of the preamble discussing the agency’s analysis of the rule under EO 13,771, it is clearly marked as being regulatory. Though there is no specific cost of the rule provided in this section, the total cost of the rule calculated from elsewhere in the Federal Register notice was $9.6 billion – an enormous sum. In the final list of regulatory budget actions released by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, however, the rule is not included.

Read the analysis.