2022-16480. Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request: Extension: Rule 31 and Form R31

Upon Written Request, Copies Available From: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of FOIA Services, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549-2736

Notice is hereby given that, pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (“PRA”) (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) a request for extension of the previously approved collection of information provided for in Rule 31 (17 CFR 240.31) and Form R31 (17 CFR 249.11) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78ee) (“Exchange Act”).

Section 31 of the Exchange Act requires the Commission to collect fees and assessments from national securities exchanges and national securities associations (collectively, “self-regulatory organizations” or “SROs”) based on the volume of their securities transactions. To collect the proper amounts, the Commission adopted Rule 31 and Form R31 under the Exchange Act whereby each SRO must report to the Commission the volume of its securities transactions and the Commission, based on those data, calculates the amount of fees and assessments that each SRO owes pursuant to Section 31. Rule 31 and Form R31 require each SRO to provide these data on a monthly basis.

Currently, there are 27 respondents under Rule 31 that are subject to the collection of information requirements of Rule 31: 24 national securities exchanges, one national securities association, and two registered clearing agencies that are required to provide certain data in their possession needed by the SROs to complete Form R31, although these two clearing agencies are not themselves required to complete and submit Form R31.^[1] The Commission estimates that the total burden for all 27 respondents is 432 hours per year. The Commission estimates that, based on previous and current experience, three additional national securities exchanges will become registered and subject to the reporting requirements of Rule 31 over the course of the authorization period and collectively incur a burden of 18 hours per year. Thus, the Commission estimates the collective burden for all respondents (existing and new added together) to be 450 hours per year. The SEC does not believe that the 27 existing or 3 expected new respondents will have to incur any capital or start-up costs, or any additional operational or maintenance costs (other than as already discussed in this paragraph), to comply with the collection of information requirements imposed by Rule 31 and Form R31. The SEC estimates that the average annual cost to the SEC of processing all of these filings would be $20,307.48 (90.1 hours at an average of $225.39 per hour).

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information under the PRA unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

The public may view background documentation for this information collection at the following website: > www.reginfo.gov <. Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent by September 1, 2022 to (i) > [e-mail] < and (ii) David Bottom, Director/Chief Information Officer, Securities and Exchange Commission, c/o John Pezzullo, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549, or by sending an email to: [e-mail].

Dated: July 27, 2022.

J. Matthew DeLesDernier,

Deputy Secretary.

Footnotes

1.  Since the last renewal period, when there was one security futures exchange that reported transactions, that exchanged has ceased operation. Therefore, currently, no security futures exchanges report any transaction in security futures on Form R31.