The Federal government is considering "double charging" companies for A$260 million worth of annual regulatory fees under its proposed user-pays model for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. This is said to be pushing the cost of doing business in Australia in an uncompetitive direction, with accusations of "gouging" levelled at the Federal government.The proposed cost recovery model is designed to replace the arrangement whereby ASIC collects $680 million in annual registry fees and other charges on behalf of the government and pays the money into consolidated revenue. ASIC then receives around half of the money back each year in budget appropriations.This arrangement has seen ASIC become a lucrative source of revenue for the federal government for more than a decade, despite its portrayal as an impost upon taxpayers due to its extensive regulatory work. During the Senate Inquiry into the Performance of ASIC, the Commission's chairman Greg Medcraft said the regulator was running its corporate registry services at A$142 million per year. This low cost base delivers an annual $540 million profit to the federal government.In return for levying these charges, the regulator receives federal funding of around A$350 million per year to cover all of its work, including operation of the corporate registry, market supervision and credit regulation.In its report, the Senate Inquiry into the Performance of ASIC strongly supported the introduction of a cost recovery model as registry fees were a poor proxy for the regulator's workload. It was clear, however, that registry fees needed to be reduced in tandem with increases in other fees. Recommendation 51 of the inquiry's final report said these fees should be brought "in line with the fees charged in other jurisdictions", although the government has been non-committal about its position on this point.The government is undertaking a feasibility study on a possible sale or float of ASIC's company registry arm, which could raise between A$1 billion and A$7 billion, depending on the level of fees that a purchaser is able to charge.Kevin Davis, one of five panel members on the Financial Services Inquiry, said the decision on pricing for ASIC's company data would be a significant one for corporate transparency. Davis, professor of finance at the University of Melbourne, said entrenching high levels of fees could affect academics, activists, businesses and citizen journalists. "It's a situation where you have to collect this information so the question then becomes should you view it as a public resource that should be made available to people or do you see it as a revenue opportunity? The downside of it being seen as a revenue earner is that you reduce the sensible usage of it," Davis said.The Australian fees for company searches and other registry-related charges are some of the highest in the world, said Jeffrey Knapp, lecturer in accounting at UNSW Australia. Knapp said Australia's decision to put company information behind a paywall had damaged corporate transparency and academic research. In addition, he said the fees for ASIC's corporate work represented a hidden tax