Expands the Regulatory Flexibility Act so federal agencies must analyze the indirect costs and benefits of their rules on small businesses, nonprofits, and tribal organizations, and gives the Small Business Administration's Chief Counsel for Advocacy a larger role in reviewing those rules.

• Requires agencies' regulatory flexibility analyses to estimate indirect economic effects on small entities, including compliance costs and effects on revenue, and to describe alternatives that maximize beneficial impacts as well as minimize adverse ones.
• Requires agencies to notify the Chief Counsel for Advocacy and provide draft rules and impact information before publishing certain proposed rules, and directs the Chief Counsel to convene a review panel and report on the rule's effect on small entities.
• Requires agencies to review existing rules that significantly affect a substantial number of small entities within 10 years and to publish a plan for doing so.
• Bars agencies from imposing civil fines on small businesses for a first-time paperwork violation, with exceptions for public health and safety, serious harm, and tax-related violations.

• Oversight and Government Reform Committee (House)
• Small Business Committee (House)
• Judiciary Committee (House)

Government Operations and Politics