You may be getting a letter from the FCC in the next couple of days (if you haven’t already) alerting you to the deadline for this year’s regulatory fees. That letter – which will not bear any signature of any FCC official or identify any originating office within the FCC – will probably say that the deadline is September 22.
Don’t necessarily believe it.
We have been informally advised by the Commission’s staff that the letters were prepared and shipped out by an outside company to which the FCC had given the September 22 date some time ago. But in the meantime, the Commission’s staff has apparently determined that either September 23 or 24 might be a better date. We are told that an official notification – including a banner to be prominently displayed on the FCC’s website – is in the works. Of course, the final date may turn out to be September 22 after all, just like the letter says. Sometimes you never know about these things.
Needless to say, whatever the final deadline might be, you are not required to wait until the very last minute to file your fees. Au contraire. You should feel free to file your fees at your earliest convenience. As far as we can tell, the fees specified in the letter notifications that got sent out may be correct (although, as we have previously warned everyone, those notifications do not include fees for any auxiliary stations). In other words, with the letter in hand you should be able to figure out what you owe. So you might even be in a position to file your fees today.
Not.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, the Commission’s Fee Filer system has not yet been set up to accept this year’s reg fees. And, as we have previously reported, all reg fee filers this year must start the payment process through Fee Filer.
When will you be able to file your fees? When will you have to file your fees? At this point nobody seems to know for sure. We expect all of these questions to be cleared up reasonably quickly. Check back here to CommLawBlog for updates on getting your reg fees filed.
