The price of reaching the Do Not Call list rises again on 1 October, and the Federal Trade Commission had no say in the number

Eighty-five dollars per area code.

That is what access to the National Do Not Call Registry costs from 1 October, under a final rule the Federal Trade Commission filed for public inspection at 8.45 on Tuesday morning. The fee today is $82. The most any single entity can be charged for area codes of data goes from $22,626 to $23,425, and an area code added during the second six months of a subscription goes from $41 to $43.

Nobody at the Commission chose those numbers.

The fee is a statutory calculation

The Do-Not-Call Registry Fee Extension Act of 2007 sets the whole mechanism, and the rule works through it in the open. Congress fixed base amounts for fiscal 2009 of $54 per area code for a full year, $27 for an area code added in the second half of a subscription, and a $14,850 ceiling for any one entity. Every later fee is those base amounts multiplied by the change in consumer prices since a fixed starting point.

The starting point is the average of the monthly consumer price index for all urban consumers over the twelve months to June 2008, which the rule gives as 211.702. The comparison figure is the average over the twelve months to June 2026, which is 333.952. That is an increase of 57.75 percent.

Apply it to the base and the arithmetic falls out. The annual fee works to $85.18, which the statute requires be rounded to $85. The half-year fee works to $42.59, rounded to $43. The ceiling works to $23,425.32, rounded to $23,425.

The threshold test came first

Before any of that, the Act asks a prior question: has the index moved enough to bother. If consumer prices have risen less than one percent since the last increase, the fee does not change at all.

There was an increase for fiscal 2026, so the Commission measured from there. The change since was 3.5 percent. That cleared the one percent threshold, so the fees move for fiscal 2027.

No comment period, and the reason is on the page

The rule takes effect without notice and comment. The Commission relies on the good cause provision of the Administrative Procedure Act, at 5 U.S.C. 553(b), on the stated ground that the adjustments are mandated by the 2007 Act and are merely technical, which makes soliciting comment unnecessary. The Regulatory Flexibility Act analysis falls away for the same reason.

The amendment itself is four line edits to a single section of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, 16 CFR 310.8, replacing each old figure with the new one in paragraphs (c) and (d). It is signed by Joel Christie, the Commission's acting secretary, and publishes on Wednesday.