What actually changed, and when

The FTC's Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees — 16 C.F.R. Part 464 — took effect on May 12, 2025 and covers two industries: live-event tickets and short-term lodging. The final rule as published in the Federal Register targets two behaviors specifically: hiding the total price by leaving mandatory fees out of advertised prices, and misrepresenting what a fee is for.

Three requirements drive every practical decision that follows:

• The total price must appear everywhere a price appears. Not just at checkout. Per the FTC's staff compliance FAQ, the total includes every charge the business knows about and can calculate upfront.
• The total price must be the most prominent number on the screen — larger, bolder, or otherwise harder to miss than any other pricing figure, with one exception: the final amount of payment, which must be shown as prominently as, or more prominently than, the total.
• Anything you leave out has to be disclosed before you ask for payment, including its nature, purpose, and amount, and what it pays for.

You may still itemize. The rule doesn't ban breaking out the venue charge from the catering charge. It bans letting the itemization outrank the total.

Does it reach a nonprofit gala? The honest answer

Two edges are genuinely blurry, and any advisor who tells you otherwise is selling certainty they don't have.

First, the jurisdictional edge. The FTC's authority under Section 4 of the FTC Act runs to entities "organized to carry on business for its own profit or that of its members." A bona fide charity may sit outside that line — but the Commission has said it looks past the form of the charter to the organization's actual activities, case by case. More to the point: the ticketing platform processing your seats is unambiguously a business. So is the venue. So is the production company. If any of them displays your price, the rule reaches that display.

Second, the "live event" edge. The FTC describes covered live-event tickets as concerts, sporting events, music, theater, and other live performances an audience watches as they occur. A gala with a headline performer, a live auction, or a band is squarely in that conversation. A seated dinner with a podium and a slideshow is a harder call — and a call you do not want to be the test case for.

The operational conclusion is the same either way. Price all-in, because the platform is covered even if you aren't, because state deceptive-trade-practice law doesn't wait for a federal rule, and because a donor who discovers a fee at checkout has learned something about your organization that no impact report will unlearn.

What goes in the number on your invitation

Only three categories may be held back from the advertised total, and each must still be disclosed before the payment prompt.

That last row is where fundraisers most often stumble. Many ticketing tools ship with a pre-checked "add 3% to cover our processing costs" box. The FTC treats default billing, pre-checked boxes, and opt-out mechanics as making a charge mandatory — a fee is not optional just because a guest can remove it after noticing it. Uncheck the box, or put the amount in your total price and stop calling it optional.

Stop calling it a "service fee"

The rule also polices vocabulary. The FTC's guidance instructs businesses to describe what a fee actually pays for and to avoid vague labels like "convenience fee," "service fee," and "processing fee." Its published examples of violations include a ticket seller calling a charge government-required when it isn't, and a seller inflating a "taxes and fees" line with margin it keeps.

For a gala, that means a "venue facility charge" should correspond to something the venue charges you. A "sustainability fee" should fund sustainability. If your board wants a fee that quietly funds general operations, the compliant version of that idea is a higher ticket price, not a creatively named surcharge.

Where galas actually get caught: the display audit

Enforcement in the StubHub matter turned on the first three pricing displays a shopper encountered, not the checkout page. Galas have more pricing displays than most organizers realize. Before your invitation drops, inventory every surface where a number appears — and confirm each one shows the same all-in total:

1. The printed invitation and reply card
2. The save-the-date email and every subsequent send
3. The event landing page, the seat-selection screen, and the cart
4. Instagram stories, Facebook events, and paid social creative
5. The sponsorship deck and the table-buy PDF your board members forward
6. Any third-party listing, community calendar, or partner page displaying your price

Two adjacent traps. If you advertise across markets at different prices, FTC guidance says to advertise the maximum total price applicable to the area you're targeting. And if early-bird, member, or board-rate pricing isn't available to everyone, the advertised total is the price everyone can actually get — the discounted figure can appear, but it cannot be the most prominent number until the buyer qualifies for it. Coordinating that consistency across print, email, social, and a sponsorship deck is exactly the kind of cross-vendor detail our corporate events team tracks alongside the run of show.

The collision nobody plans for: all-in pricing meets the tax receipt

Charity galas carry a second disclosure duty that has nothing to do with the FTC. When a supporter pays more than $75 and receives goods or services in return — dinner, drinks, entertainment — that's a quid pro quo contribution, and the IRS requires a written disclosure statement telling the donor that the deductible amount is limited to what they paid above the fair market value of what they received, plus a good-faith estimate of that value. The statement must be furnished with the solicitation or the receipt. Missing it carries a penalty of $10 per contribution, capped at $5,000 per fundraising event or mailing. IRS Publication 1771 walks through the mechanics.

Here's the collision: moving fees into your displayed ticket price changes the number the donor pays, not the fair market value of the evening they receive. If your invitation historically read "$250, of which $115 is tax-deductible," and you now display $271.50 all-in, someone has to recalculate that second figure and update the acknowledgment template, the reply card, and the platform's receipt copy. Build the fair-market-value estimate at the same meeting where you set the ticket price — not the week after the event, when your development director is reconciling three hundred receipts.

Florida sales tax on admissions

Government charges may sit outside the advertised total, but they still have to be right. Admissions in Florida are generally taxable under section 212.04, Florida Statutes, and the exemptions in that statute are specific and enumerated rather than automatic. A Consumer's Certificate of Exemption (Form DR-14) governs what an organization buys tax-free; it is not, by itself, a determination about admissions the organization charges. Confirm your specific event's treatment with the Florida Department of Revenue or your tax counsel before the first ticket sells, because the answer changes both your checkout math and your net proceeds forecast.

Decide who absorbs the fee — at budget, not at checkout

All-in pricing forces a decision that used to be deferred: does the guest's displayed price go up, or does your net per seat go down? There are only three honest answers, and each has a budget consequence worth modeling during gala production planning:

• Absorb the fees. Hold the invitation at $250 and eat the platform cost. Cleanest optics, lowest net per seat — plan the catering and production budget against the lower number, not the headline.
• Display the true total. Advertise $271.50 everywhere and itemize underneath. Fully transparent, and it requires your board and your marketing team to stop quoting the old number in conversation.
• Offer a genuine opt-in. An unchecked "cover our processing costs" box, added at the guest's initiative. Real, but budget conservatively — opt-in rates are not opt-out rates.

Whichever you choose, the total has to be locked before the invitation goes to print, because a printed price you later have to correct is the most expensive kind of compliance error. Getting the venue quote, the catering service charge, and the ticketing platform's fee schedule on one page early is the practical fix, and it's why we bring planning and vendor coordination into pricing conversations rather than after them.

Common questions

Does "all-in" mean tax has to be included in the advertised price?

No. Government charges are one of the three permitted exclusions. But you must disclose the tax amount and purpose before prompting for payment, and the final amount of payment — total plus tax, shipping, and any add-ons — must then be displayed at least as prominently as the total price.

Our ticketing platform controls the checkout display. Whose problem is a violation?

Both parties have obligations. FTC guidance says sellers advertising through a marketplace must give the platform accurate pricing information, including mandatory and optional ancillary charges, and intermediaries that display prices must show the total and must give sellers what they need to calculate it. Ask your platform in writing how it handles total-price display and where its fees land. Get the answer before you sign.

Can we still run early-bird pricing or a board discount?

Yes. The rule permits discounts and promotions. If the offer isn't available to everyone, the advertised total price is the price everyone can get; once a buyer qualifies, the total updates to reflect the discount.

What's the actual exposure if we get it wrong?

Businesses that violate an FTC trade regulation rule can be ordered to change their practices, refund consumers, and pay civil penalties. The StubHub matter — settled without any admission or denial of the allegations — produced a $10 million redress obligation from a three-day sales window. The reputational exposure for a fundraiser is separate and, for most organizations, larger.

Is a corporate awards dinner treated differently from a charity gala?

The rule's protections extend to business-to-business transactions as well as individual consumers, so "our attendees are corporate buyers" is not an exemption. If you display a per-seat or per-table price, display the total.

This article summarizes publicly available federal and state guidance for event planning purposes. It is not legal or tax advice. Coverage questions — particularly whether a specific gala format constitutes a live event, and how Florida admissions tax applies to your organization — depend on facts we can't assess from here. Confirm with qualified counsel and your tax advisor before finalizing ticket pricing or donor acknowledgment language.