INFRASTRUCTURE
Builders urge Congress to ease regulatory burdens
Home building is one of the most highly regulated industries in America, but two bills have been floated to trim the red tape.
“On average, regulations imposed by the government on all levels account for more than 25 percent of the cost of a new single-family home for sale,” said Ed Brady, vice chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Regulatory Reform this month.
He’s now calling on the House to move quickly on two bills meant to strengthen the Administrative Procedures Act, enacted in 1946 to govern the actions of federal regulators.
According to the NAHB, rule-making agencies under both Democratic and Republican administrations have skirted the basic tenets of the APA. The REVIEW Act would postpone the implementation of rules that could cost the economy $1 billion or more each year.
Several regulations affecting the housing market will be before the courts, including the Environmental Protection Agency’s new ozone standards and the Department of Labor’s proposed overtime regulation that could affect up to 116,000 construction supervisors, Brady said. “It is simply unfair to require small businesses to make the financial investments to comply with new regulations while the rules are being reviewed by the courts,” Brady told lawmakers.
The second bill, titled the Regulatory Predictability for Business Growth Act, would ensure federal agencies don’t have the power to alter existing rules without public input. In the past, regulators used changes to interpretive rules as a loophole to avoid public comment requirements. These bills would help restore the intent of Congress when it passed the Administrative Procedures Act, Brady said. – Joana Suleiman
ENVIRONMENT
Coast Guard to deter polluters with higher liability costs
The Coast Guard is upping the liability costs for oil spills from ships, deepwater ports and onshore facilities.
In a final rule published this month in the Federal Register, the Coast Guard says the higher costs are required to deter polluters.
The Coast Guard also is giving itself new authority under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to have the final say in making liability-limit increases based on changes to the Consumer Price Index. In the past, it was up to the president to raise the liability limits through a cumbersome process that required various agencies such as the EPA to also weigh in on the issue.
“This final rule also establishes a simplified regulatory procedure for the Coast Guard to make future required periodic CPI increases to these OPA 90 limits of liability,” reads a summary of the Coast Guard rule. “These regulatory inflation increases to the limits of liability are required by OPA 90 and are necessary to preserve the deterrent effect and polluter pays principle embodied in OPA 9.” – John Siciliano
IRS
Pay your taxes or cough up that passport
A new law buried in a highway funding bill would give the government the power to revoke passports of citizens who owe $50,000 or more to the IRS. The House bill is expected to pass Congress in early December, and would take effect on Jan. 1.
The rule, which has been passed in similar versions by the House and Senate, is expected to save the government $398 million over the next decade. The most vulnerable to the provision are the almost 8 million Americans who live overseas and need their passports for work visas, banking and residency permits, and may not even be receiving tax notices from the IRS.
The agency sent 855,000 notices to U.S. citizens abroad in 2014, but many notices failed to reach the intended party due to difficulty with international addresses. The IRS does not allow notices via email, only via the Postal Service, and their notices may not be forwarded internationally.
Unlike other countries, the U.S. has no representative in government for citizens residing abroad. Many expatriates may not understand their tax obligations, nor have access to tax help to resolve complicated matters. Only two countries in the world tax the worldwide income of their citizens who are nonresidents: Eritrea and the U.S. – Joana Suleiman
