THE INVISIBLE FIST: Federal Regulations Amount To A $15,000 ‘Hidden Tax’ On Families, Report Finds.

The federal regulatory apparatus imposed a roughly $14,600 “hidden tax” on American households in 2018, according to a report by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

“That amounts to 20 percent of the average pretax income of $73,573, and 24 percent of the average expenditure budget of $60,060,” CEI’s Wayne Crews wrote in his annual Ten Thousand Commandments report released Tuesday.

In total, federal regulations, once again, cost the U.S. economy $1.9 trillion despite the Trump administration’s effort to roll back onerous regulations. Crews said his report was a conservative estimate of the true cost of regulations.

“The regulatory ‘tax’ exceeds every item in the household budget except housing,” Crews wrote. “More is ‘spent’ on embedded regulation than on health care, food, transportation, entertainment, apparel, services, and savings.”

That’s a lot.