Secretary of State Proposes Rules to Increase Business Fees

The latest Iowa Administrative Bulletin was published on Wednesday. It includes a proposed administrative rule that would significantly increase a number of fees businesses pay to the Secretary of State’s office. The rule, ARC3320, proposes numerous fee increases including:

• Fees paid by the account holder for the privilege of maintaining the account would increase from $25 to $100.
• Fees for filing and indexing a UCC document of one or two pages communicated on paper (faxes included) would be raised from $10 to $20. If there are additional pages, the fee is raised from $20 to $40.
• Fees for filing and indexing a biennial report filed on paper or in a paper-based format would increase from $45 to $60.
• Fees for an electronic filing through the Secretary of State’s website would increase from $30 to $45.

The fee increases will go into a new technology fund created with the passage of SF516 last session, which allows up to $2 million annually in fee increases implemented after July 1, 2017 to flow into the technology fund, instead of the state general fund like other Secretary of State fees. The fund is to be used for purposes of “modernizing technology used by the secretary of state to fulfill the duties of office”. This fund sunsets in 2022.

Secretary Pate spoke to the ABI Board of Directors in September explaining his opinion as to why a fee increase was needed. No timeline or clear plan for a proposed increase was communicated to the board of directors. ABI staff had been working with the Secretary of State’s office since last winter to better understand how, if at all, the potential increases would improve business services. At this time, it is unclear to ABI how this will help members, but we want to hear from you.

Please contact Jessica Harder at jharder@iowaabi.org by October 6 to give your input on ABI’s comments and position on these proposed fee increases.