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The SEC issued its first fee rate advisory for the 2025 fiscal year. The bad news is that filing fees are going up for the third straight year, but the good news is that they’re rising at a much slower rate than they have during the past two fiscal years. For fiscal 2025, the SEC says that the filing fees will increase from $147.60 per million dollars to $153.10 per million dollars, effective October 1, 2024. That’s a 3.7% increase, but it’s a lot less than the 34% fee increase for fiscal 2024 and the 19% increase for fiscal 2023.

The fee rate advisory points out that the SEC doesn’t set filing fees arbitrarily:

The securities laws require the Commission to make annual adjustments to the rates for fees paid under Section 6(b) of the Securities Act of 1933, which also adjusts the annual fee rates under Sections 13(e) and 14(g) of the Securities Act of 1934, as well as Rule 24f-2 under the Investment Company Act of 1940. The Commission must set rates for the fees paid under Section 6(b) to levels that the Commission projects will generate collections equal to annual statutory target amounts.

The Commission’s projections are calculated using a methodology developed in consultation with the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget. The Commission determined the statutory target amount for fiscal year 2025 to be $864,721,147 by adjusting the fiscal year 2024 target collection amount of $839,771,535 for the rate of inflation.

– John Jenkins