Review of the Commission's Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2025

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[MD Docket Nos. 25-190, 24-85; FCC 25-52; FR ID 311170]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Review of the Commission's Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2025</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) adopts its regulatory fee schedule to assess and collect regulatory fees for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY 25). </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective September 8, 2025. To avoid penalties and interest, regulatory fees should be paid by the due date of September 25, 2025. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Patrick Brogan, Office of Economics and Analytics, <E T="03">Patrick.Brogan@fcc.gov</E> or 202-418-7378. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Report and Order ( <E T="03">FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Report and Order</E> ) in MD Docket Nos. 25-190, 24-85, FCC 25-52, adopted on August 28, 2025, and released on August 29, 2025. The full text of this document is available at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-52A1.pdf.</E> <E T="03">Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis.</E> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended (RFA), requires that an agency prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for notice and comment rulemakings, unless the agency certifies that “the rule will not, if promulgated, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” Accordingly, the Commission has prepared a final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA) concerning the potential impact of rule and policy changes contained in the <E T="03">FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Report and Order.</E> The FRFA is set forth below. <E T="03">Congressional Review Act.</E> The Commission has determined, and the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, concurs that this rule is non-major under the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 804(2). The Commission will send a copy of the <E T="03">FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Report and Order</E> to Congress and the Government Accountability Office pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A). <E T="03">Final Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 Analysis.</E> This document does not contain any proposed new or substantively modified information collections subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), Public Law 104-13. In addition, therefore, it does not contain any new or modified information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, see 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4). <E T="03">People with Disabilities.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> Each fiscal year (FY), the Commission must adopt a schedule of regulatory fees to be assessed and collected by the end of September in an amount that reasonably can be expected to total the Commission's annual salaries and expenses (S&E) appropriation. Pursuant to the Commission's statutory obligation in Section 9 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended, (Act or Communications Act) and the Commission's FY 2025 Further Consolidation Appropriations Act, the Commission adopts a regulatory fee schedule for FY 2025, to assess and collect $390,192,000 in regulatory fees. In June, the Commission proposed a regulatory fee schedule for FY 2025. Consistent with the Commission's long-standing regulatory fee methodology and the record gathered, the Commission adopts the proposal in the <E T="03">FY 2025 NPRM,</E> 90 FR 25432, June 16, 2025, to reallocate the time of 61 indirect full time equivalents (FTEs) as direct for regulatory fee purposes. This determination rests on the Commission's conclusion that certain FTE work in the Office of General Counsel, the Office of Economics and Analytics, and the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is sufficiently linked to the oversight and regulation of regulatory fee payors such that the burden of that work should be considered in applying the Commission's regulatory fee methodology. The Commission also implements the targeted amendments it adopted in June 2025 to the methodology it uses to assess regulatory fees for space and earth stations. Additionally, the Commission adopts its proposal in the FY 2025 NPRM for the calculation of television broadcaster regulatory fees, as adjusted. The Commission implements these determinations and adopts a schedule of regulatory fees, as set forth in Tables 3 and 4. Finally, the Commission declines to adopt various proposals to modify its regulatory fee methodology or to add new regulatory fee categories in FY 2025. The arguments supporting such proposals have been fully considered by the Commission in prior proceedings. Commenters have provided no basis for the Commission to change its prior determinations, and therefore the Commission reaffirms the prior conclusions that the methodology changes and new regulatory fee categories that have been proposed are unworkable and logistically infeasible at this time. <E T="03">Background.</E> FY 2025 started on October 1, 2024, and ends on September 30, 2025. The regulatory fee collection is guided by both the statutory authority in sections 6 and 9 of the Act and the explicit language of each fiscal year's S&E appropriation directing the amount to be collected as an offsetting collection. Section 9 of the Act and the FY 2025 S&E appropriation require the Commission to collect $390,192,000 in regulatory fees in FY 2025. The Act requires the Commission to assess and collect regulatory fees to recover the costs of carrying out its activities in the total amounts provided for in Appropriations Acts. Regulatory fees cover the Commission's non-auctions direct, indirect, and support costs, including costs to cover statutorily required tasks that do not directly equate with oversight and regulation of a particular fee payor, but instead benefit the Commission and the industry as a whole. Direct costs are those such as salaries and expenses, indirect costs are those such as overhead functions, and support costs include those such as rent, utilities, and equipment. Since regulatory fees must recover the total amount of the Commission's S&E appropriation for the fiscal year, they also must cover the costs incurred in oversight and regulation of: (1) entities that are statutorily exempt from paying regulatory fees; (2) entities whose total assessed annual regulatory fees fall below the annual de minimis threshold; and (3) entities whose regulatory fees are waived. Entities that are exempt from paying regulatory fees include governmental and nonprofit entities, amateur radio operators, and noncommercial radio and television stations. The Commission has previously observed that it is consistent with the Act to include those costs that are attributable to the fee paying and exempt regulatees in the revenue requirement because all of the regulatees in that fee category, whether they pay regulatory fees or not, benefit from the oversight and regulation of that bureau. The Commission's annual de minimis threshold is $1,000. The Commission takes into consideration the relatively small amount of waivers, exemptions, and non-payors in our calculations each year so that we can recover the full amount of our S&E appropriation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Fees Calculation Methodology</HD> Congress has prescribed a method for the Commission to collect the full S&E appropriation by keying its regulatory fee assessment to its FTE burden. One FTE, a “Full Time Equivalent” or “Full Time Employee,” is a unit of measure equal to the work performed annually by a full-time person (working a 40-hour workweek for a full year) assigned to the particular job, and subject to agency personnel staffing limitations established by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In this proceeding, if the Commission states 1.5 FTEs work on a particular subject matter, that might mean three individuals spend 50% of their time on that area. Moreover, in the <E T="03">FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Report and Order,</E> when the Commission discusses FTEs and any change in allocation, it is solely for regulatory fee purposes and does not reflect proposals for the change of personnel in the various organizational work units. The methodology for assessing regulatory fees must “reflect the full-time equivalent number of employees within the bureaus and offices of the Commission, adjusted to take into account factors that are reasonably related to the benefits provided to the payor of the fee by the Commission's activities.” Thus, the fee assigned to each regulatory fee category relates to the FTE burden associated with oversight and regulation of each regulatory fee category by the relevant core bureaus ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, the Media Bureau, most of the Wireline Competition Bureau, part of the Office of International Affairs (OIA), and most of the Space Bureau). The Commission has previously concluded that allocating the work of FTEs in the Wireline Competition Bureau devoted to non-high-cost Universal Service Fund programs as indirect FTEs is consistent with how FTEs working for programs that benefit consumers and the American public are treated elsewhere in the Commission. Moreover, in the non-high-cost universal service fund programs, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 115k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━