7 U.S.C. § 16a — Service fees and National Futures Association study

(a) Development and implementation of plan for user fees; report to and approval by Congressional committees — Despite any other law, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission may create and put in place a plan to charge and collect reasonable fees, to cover the estimated cost of regulating transactions under its jurisdiction. But before putting such a plan into action, the Commission has to report its plan to the House Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, including whether collecting such fees is feasible and worthwhile. Any plan under this section can't take effect until both committees approve it. Fees collected go into the U.S. Treasury as miscellaneous receipts. (b) National Futures Association regulatory experience; report; contents — The Commission had to send Congress a report studying the National Futures Association's regulatory record from January 1, 1983 through September 30, 1985, due by January 1, 1986. That report had to cover at least seven things: (1) how fully the Association carried out the self-regulation program approved under section 17(p) and (q) of the Commodity Exchange Act, and how well that program worked; (2) actual and projected federal cost savings, if any, from the Association's operations; (3) actual and projected costs the Commission and the public would have faced if the Association hadn't taken on self-regulation in certain areas; (4) any problem areas the Association ran into; (5) how well the Association and Commission worked together; (6) the Commission's own efficiency gains, actual and expected, from the Association's ongoing regulatory work; and (7) how much the study showed the Commission could now shift its attention to more pressing regulatory problems, thanks to the Association's work. (c) Schedule of fees for services, activities and functions; notice and hearing; actual cost standard — Nothing in this section limits the Commission's separate power to set, after notice and a chance for a hearing, a fee schedule for services, activities, and functions it performs while administering and enforcing the Commodity Exchange Act. However, any fee the Commission sets for a specific service, activity, or function cannot be more than what that service, activity, or function actually costs the Commission.