Clearing fees are the small charges that cover the back-end work of confirming, guaranteeing, and settling a securities trade after it executes. Every time you buy or sell a stock or option, a clearing house steps between the two sides of the trade to guarantee delivery, an exchange matches the order, and regulators collect a per-transaction assessment. On a typical retail stock trade, the total clearing-related cost is usually well under a dollar. For active options traders and institutions trading in volume, the same fractions of a penny add up quickly, which is why it’s worth knowing exactly what each line on your confirmation represents.
What You’re Actually Paying For
Once a buyer and seller agree on price and quantity, the trade still has to be confirmed, each side’s obligations calculated, and securities and cash exchanged. That post-trade process is clearing and settlement, and the central counterparty (CCP) does most of the work. Through a legal step called novation, the CCP becomes the seller to the buyer and the buyer to the seller, so if either side defaults the other still gets paid.
To stand behind that guarantee, CCPs require their member firms to post collateral, called margin. Initial margin covers potential future losses on open positions, and variation margin adjusts daily as prices move.1Bank of England. Draft Supervisory Statement on CCP Margin Clearing fees are the price of that risk-management infrastructure. Settlement, the final exchange of securities for cash, now happens one business day after the trade date in U.S. equity markets, a T+1 cycle that replaced T+2 on May 28, 2024.2U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Shortening the Securities Transaction Settlement Cycle
The Charges That Make Up a Clearing Fee
What your broker calls a clearing fee is really a composite of charges from three sources: the clearing house itself, the exchange where the order filled, and regulatory bodies that require brokers to collect fees on their behalf.
Clearing House Fees
In U.S. equities, the National Securities Clearing Corporation (NSCC), a subsidiary of the DTCC, handles the bulk of clearing. For options, the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) is the sole CCP. The NSCC’s 2026 fee schedule charges $0.44 per million dollars of gross position value going into netting and $2.16 per million dollars of net position value coming out, plus a $300 monthly clearance account fee.3DTCC. 2026 NSCC Fee Schedule The OCC charges clearing members $0.025 per options contract.4Options Clearing Corporation. Schedule of Fees On a per-trade basis these amounts are tiny, which is why they’re almost never itemized on a retail confirmation.
SEC Section 31 Fee
Section 31 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 requires exchanges and FINRA to pay the SEC a fee based on the dollar value of covered securities sales, recovering the cost of the SEC’s annual appropriation.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 U.S. Code 78ee – Transaction Fees Brokers pass it through to you. It applies only to sell transactions.
The rate changes. The SEC adjusts it at least annually and sometimes mid-year depending on how much it has already collected against its budget. For fiscal year 2026, the rate was $0.00 per million dollars for covered sales through April 3, 2026, then rose to $20.60 per million dollars starting April 4, 2026.6U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Section 31 Transaction Fee Rate Advisory for Fiscal Year 2026 On a $50,000 stock sale at the $20.60 rate, that works out to about $1.03.
FINRA Trading Activity Fee
The FINRA Trading Activity Fee (TAF) funds FINRA’s surveillance and enforcement work. It also applies only to sales. The rate depends on what you’re selling:
- Equity securities: $0.000166 per share sold, capped at $8.30 per trade.7FINRA. FINRA Fee Adjustment Schedule
- Options: $0.00329 per contract sold.8FINRA. Section 1 – Member Regulatory Fees
Selling 10,000 shares of stock triggers a TAF of 10,000 × $0.000166 = $1.66. The $8.30 cap kicks in around 50,000 shares in a single transaction, which mainly matters for institutional block trades.
Options Regulatory Fee
The Options Regulatory Fee (ORF) is charged by the options exchanges themselves to cover their regulatory costs. Each exchange sets its own rate and applies it per contract side. Rates shift periodically. Nasdaq’s NOM market, for example, temporarily raised its ORF from $0.00005 to $0.0006 per contract side effective January 2, 2026.9Federal Register. Self-Regulatory Organizations – The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC Because an options order may fill on any one of several exchanges, the ORF you pay depends on where it ends up.
What It Actually Costs
The math works differently for stocks and options, which is why an active options strategy can rack up noticeably more in fees than a much larger stock trade.
Stock Trades
On equity trades the regulatory pass-through fees dominate. NSCC clearing charges on a typical retail order are fractions of a penny because they’re assessed per million dollars of position value.3DTCC. 2026 NSCC Fee Schedule On a $10,000 sale of 1,000 shares, you’d pay roughly $0.17 in TAF, a few cents in NSCC charges, and about $0.21 in the Section 31 fee at the April 4, 2026 rate. The total clearing-related cost is well under a dollar.
Options Trades
Options fees are calculated per contract. The OCC charges $0.025 per contract, the ORF adds a small per-contract-side exchange fee, and the FINRA TAF adds $0.00329 per contract sold.4Options Clearing Corporation. Schedule of Fees Because each leg of a multi-leg strategy counts as a separate contract, a 10-contract iron condor involves 40 contracts and generates 40 individual clearing charges. That’s where the nominal cost of options clearing starts to become visible to retail traders.
Reading the Fees on Your Confirmation
Most brokers display at least some of these charges on trade confirmations. SEC Rule 10b-10 requires broker-dealers to disclose certain transaction information in writing at or before trade completion. In practice, the SEC fee and FINRA TAF are often broken out as separate line items on sell confirmations, while the clearing house fee itself is usually embedded in the overall transaction cost rather than itemized.
If your broker advertises “zero commissions,” clearing fees still exist. They’re either absorbed by the broker, offset by payment for order flow, or built into a slightly wider spread on your execution price. Checking the regulatory fees on your confirmation is a quick way to verify what you’re actually paying. The math is straightforward: multiply shares sold by $0.000166 for the TAF, and multiply total sale value by the current Section 31 rate. If the numbers don’t match what’s printed, something else is bundled in.7FINRA. FINRA Fee Adjustment Schedule
Tax Treatment
Clearing fees and other transaction costs generally get folded into the cost basis of the securities you buy or sell, not deducted separately. The IRS treats commissions, transfer fees, and similar transaction charges as part of the purchase price when calculating basis for capital gains purposes.10Internal Revenue Service. Publication 551 – Basis of Assets Fees on a purchase increase your cost basis, reducing your eventual taxable gain. Fees on a sale reduce your net proceeds, also lowering the gain. You cannot deduct them separately as investment expenses, because miscellaneous itemized deductions for investment-related costs have been eliminated. The basis adjustment is the only tax benefit available.