The National Association of Broadcasters continues to press the FCC to expand the types of businesses that must pay regulatory fees.
The NAB said it “largely supports” the FCC’s planned regulatory fees for this fiscal year. But it wants the commission to continue trying to make its system more fair by expanding the list of who pays, including “Big Tech” companies.
This is an argument the association has been making for years. But it freshened its pitch in comments filed with the commission about the proposed fees for FY25, on which we reported recently.
[“Radio’s Regulatory Fees Are Set to Drop for Third Year in a Row”]
Regulatory fees are supposed to reflect a fair allocation of costs based on services provided to fee payors through FCC bureaus and offices. NAB’s concerns over the years include how the commission allocates costs for “full-time equivalents,” or FTEs.
It noted that the 2025 plan uses the same methodology that the FCC applied for the past two fiscal years. “Under this approach, certain indirect FTEs have been reallocated as direct FTEs to the commission’s core bureaus to more precisely align the costs associated with the work they perform with the entities that benefit from it,” NAB noted.
The NAB said it “appreciates” this effort to refine the approach “to more accurately account for the work performed by FTEs in the non-core bureaus and offices of the commission.”
Now it says the FCC “should continue its efforts to modernize and ensure the fairness and sustainability of the regulatory fee system. Specifically, the commission should expand the base of fee payors to include other beneficiaries of significant amounts of the commission’s work, regardless of where in the commission the work is performed.”
It asked the FCC to conduct roundtables with relevant stakeholders to discuss “how to expand the payor base in a way that is fair, administrable and sustainable.” It hopes the FCC will do so “well in advance” of the next annual regulatory fee proceeding.
“The current regulatory fee system places a disproportionate burden on a limited group of legacy industries, while allowing other significant beneficiaries of FCC work to avoid contributing,” it said. “A modern regulatory fee framework must recognize that the FCC’s work benefits a larger array of entities than those currently paying its costs.”
It said such payors could include broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders and major technology companies, all of which the NAB says benefit significantly from the commission’s work.
