Complying with the Dodd-Frank Act is projected to reduce U.S. gross domestic product by $895 billion from 2016 to 2025, according to an analysis today from Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum.
According to Holtz-Eakin, financial institutions will spend roughly $14.8 billion per year on Dodd-Frank compliance, which — along with increased equity capital banks hold — he described as the equivalent of a 9.3 percentage point increase in their effective tax rate.
“[T]he impact on economic growth is a decline in the per capital growth rate of 0.059 percentage points annually,” he concluded. “The lower rate of economic growth translates into a total loss of $895 billion in GDP or $3,346 for every member of the working age population over those 10 years.”