A Tool for Estimating the Cost of Reports Required by US Federal Regulations: A Method to Estimate Costs of Compliance

What is the cost of complying with government regulations? Businessmen would like to know. Lawmakers and bureaucrats would like to know as they conduct cost-benefit analyses prior to creating new regulations on businesses. Regulations often require specific actions or specific reports. Some of the actions, (Install wheelchair ramps), lend themselves to straight-forward cost estimates, but what about the many reports required by regulations? Mandatory reports are not free. The reporting cost estimator developed in this book provides an orderly way to focus choices, define assumptions, and arrive at an estimated cost of compliance with government reporting requirements. The elements used in the estimator were developed through interviews with people who are complying with existing reporting requirements. The estimating tool itself passed a preliminary validation by using it to estimate the cost of compliance with existing regulations and then comparing the estimated cost with the actual costs, as nearly as they were known."