49 U.S.C. § 45303 — Administrative provisions

(a) Fees payable to Administrator. All fees and payments collected by the FAA for services or materials it provides are payable to the FAA Administrator. (b) Refunds. The Administrator may refund a fee paid by mistake or paid in excess. (c) Where the money goes. With some exceptions (insurance-fund money, and amounts that had to go to the general Treasury fund as of September 30, 1996), all fees and money the FAA collects are credited to a separate Treasury account for FAA activities, available immediately, but only for purposes Congress has authorized, and they stay available until spent. (d) Annual budget report. On the same day each year that the President sends Congress the federal budget, the Administrator must give the relevant Senate and House committees: a list of the FAA's fee collections from the past year (1); a list of activities that fee money and appropriations funded (2); budget plans for significant programs, including future-year cost estimates (3); any proposed use of surplus fees (4); and any other information those committees want (5). (e) Cost accounting system. The FAA must build a cost-accounting system that accurately reflects its investments, operating and overhead costs, revenue, and other financial details. (f) Paying carriers as collection agents. The FAA must write rules letting an airline that is required to collect a fee from someone else on the FAA's behalf also collect an extra uniform amount to cover its reasonable expenses of collecting and handling that fee (minus any interest it earns holding the money before remitting it). (g) Data transparency. (1) Initial report: within 6 months of the 2018 FAA Reauthorization Act, using the latest full fiscal year's data, the Administrator and the Air Traffic Organization's Chief Operating Officer must calculate, for each segment of air traffic services users, the total costs allocated to that segment and the total revenue collected from it (A). The Department of Transportation's Inspector General then reviews whether the calculation model is valid, within 3 months (B)(i); if it's not valid, the Inspector General recommends fixes, the Administrator and Chief Operating Officer redo the calculations with the revised model and resubmit, and the Inspector General reviews the revised model within another 3 months (B)(ii). The Inspector General must have full access to the FAA's cost-accounting data to do this review (B)(iii). Once the model is validated, within 60 days the Administrator and Chief Operating Officer must report the results to the relevant House and Senate committees (C), and within another 60 days publish the report, including any revisions (D). (2) Biennial reporting: starting by March 31, 2019, and every two years after that for 14 years, the same costs-versus-revenue calculations must be redone using the validated model (A), reported to Congress within 15 days (B), and published within 60 days (C). (3) The segments counted separately include passenger airlines, all-cargo airlines, and various other categories of operators defined by federal aviation regulation parts (i)–(xv); the Secretary may add more segments later as data becomes available (B). (4) "Air traffic services" means services that monitor, direct, control, and guide aircraft for safe flight — including communications, navigation, surveillance, and aeronautical information — that the FAA provides directly or by contract; an "air traffic services user" is anyone using those services in U.S. or delegated international airspace.