Description:
S. 4145 would restore the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) authority to obtain monetary relief through restitution or disgorgement, which was struck down by the decision in AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC. Whereas restitution requires violators to compensate victims for their monetary loss, disgorgement strips violators of monetary profits obtained from illegal activity. When the FTC cannot return that monetary relief to harmed consumers, the money is remitted to the Treasury and thus increases revenues. Using information from the FTC about the amount of revenues remitted to the Treasury prior to the decision, CBO estimates that gross revenues would increase, on average, by $7 million per year. Because collecting those amounts would reduce the base of income and payroll taxes, that authority would reduce revenues from income and payroll taxes. (In other words, gross collections under the bill would be partially offset by a reduction in other revenues.) On that basis, CBO estimates that enacting S. 4145 would increase net revenues by $45 million over the 2022-2032 period. The budgetary effects of the legislation are detailed in Table 1.
