If you wanted to say something to the government this week about who should be allowed to buy into private companies, you would have five comment files to pick from, and picking one would mean commenting on one fifth of the question.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed five notices, all scheduled to publish in Monday's Federal Register, each asking whether one professional credential should by itself make a person an accredited investor — the status Regulation D uses to decide who may buy securities offered without registration under the Securities Act. One asks about a CPA licence. One asks about a Chartered Financial Analyst charter. One asks about a Certified Financial Planner certification. One asks about the Series 79 investment-banking licence together with the Series 86 and 87 research-analyst licences. One asks about passing an accredited-investor exam that does not exist yet, and that the notice says the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority would develop.

They are one question. They are also five releases — 33-11445 through 33-11449 — with five file numbers, 4-931 through 4-935. Comments on all five close on the same day, December 4, 2026.

The Commission tells you there are five

This is worth being precise about, because the lazy version of this argument is wrong. The Commission does not hide the other four. Each notice carries a footnote saying it is "concurrently providing notice pursuant to Note 1 to paragraph 501(a)(10) with respect to the potential designation of each of the following as qualifying natural persons for accredited investor status", and then lists every one of them by full title, "published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register". A reader who gets to the footnotes knows the shape of the thing.

What the Commission does not do is join them where it counts. Comments on the CPA question go to file 4-932 and are posted at a page keyed to 4-932. That notice's ADDRESSES section is explicit about the arithmetic this creates: "To submit a comment to more than one file, please include each file number on the subject line." For paper, "please refer to each file number." All five give the paper instruction; three of the five give the email one. The disclosure is in the prose. The work stays with the commenter.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does the opposite

In the same issue, the NRC files two documents under one docket, NRC-2025-1568, and one regulation identifier, 3150-AL61: a direct final rule expanding how certain nuclear material may be used without a licence, and a proposed rule for the same amendments. Neither says it is identical to the other, and they are not the same length — the filed copies run forty pages and ten. The short one is short because it points at the long one: for its procedural information and regulatory analysis it tells the reader to "see the direct final rule published in the Rules and Regulations section of this issue of the Federal Register." The pair exists for a procedural reason — a direct final rule takes effect on a date certain unless a significant adverse comment arrives, and the proposal is what the rulemaking falls back on if one does.

Having created two documents, the NRC then ties them together in its own DATES paragraph: "Comments received on this direct final rule will also be considered to be comments on a companion proposed rule published in the Proposed Rules section of this issue of the Federal Register." One comment, filed once, counts twice. Each document points at the other, and each says where in the issue to find it.

That is not costless either. A commenter who writes to the direct final rule has their words entered against a proposal they may never have opened. But the burden of connecting two filings sits with the agency that made two filings, which is where it is cheapest.

The Federal Aviation Administration says nothing about the others

The third case is the plainest. Five FAA proposed rules publish Monday, each of them describing itself as amending the same body of regulation — the "commercial space launch and reentry licensing regulations" — and all five closing to comment on November 4, 2026. One would add an exception to lightning hazard mitigation requirements for certain launch and reentry operations. One would say a far-field overpressure blast effects analysis "does not need to account for members of the public in hypothetical locations". One would say that an operator using physical containment as a hazard control strategy does not need to develop flight hazard areas under the existing flight hazard area analysis requirements. One would consolidate the information an applicant must supply for a flight safety analysis. One would let applications be filed through additional electronic methods — a new FAA portal, without a waiver — and would remove the option to file on paper.

They carry five docket numbers, five FAA notice numbers and five regulation identifiers: 2120-AM30, AM31, AM38, AM39 and AM40. Read all five bodies and none of them mentions any of the others — not by document number, not by docket, not by identifier, not by notice number, and not with any of the phrases agencies normally use for this, including "elsewhere in this issue" and "companion". Each body carries exactly one document number, one docket, one identifier and one notice number: its own.

What all five do name is the same executive order. Each one opens by invoking Executive Order 14335, "Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry", and each says it is published in furtherance of that order or of the policy the order sets out. So a reader who opens any one of the five learns the programme it belongs to. What no document tells them is that there are five.

Nothing requires the FAA to cross-reference. Each proposal is separately reviewable and separately withdrawable, and that is a real argument for separate dockets, not a dodge. But the consequence is that assembling the set is the reader's job, and the identifiers do not do it for them: they are not a run but two runs with a six-wide gap, AM30 and AM31 then AM38, AM39 and AM40, and the notice numbers skip as well — 26-18, 26-19, 26-22, 26-23 and 26-25.

What this is actually about

Splitting is not a scandal. A regulatory action generates as many documents as it needs, and one subject genuinely can be five decisions — five notices leave the Commission free to designate a CPA licence and decline a CFP certification, which is simpler if the two were never one order.

The point is narrower and more useful than that: whether a subject arrives as one docket or five is a choice, the three agencies in one issue made it three different ways, and the Register's structure does not tell you which one you are looking at. The document type field says "Notice" or "Proposed Rule". It does not say "one of five".

So the reading is done by hand, and four things carry most of it:

The regulation identifier. Four digits for the agency, then a letter pair and a number — 2120-AM38. In these twelve it tracks the action rather than the document: the NRC's rule and its proposal share one, 3150-AL61, and each FAA proposal has its own. Near identifiers are a lead, not a finding, and nothing in the documents says otherwise: the SEC release numbered just before this set, 33-11444, publishes in the same issue on a different subject entirely.
The docket number. The NRC's two documents share NRC-2025-1568 and the agency treats them as one comment record. The five SEC notices and the five FAA proposals each have their own, and none of them says a comment on one reaches another.
The paragraph that says so. Whether a comment on one document counts for another is stated in the document's own front matter, and not always in the same section. The NRC puts it in DATES. The SEC says the opposite in ADDRESSES, by telling you to list each file number. The FAA's five say nothing about each other at all.
Which copy you are reading. None of the twelve has published. In the copies the agencies filed, every deadline is still a blank — the SEC's five read "[INSERT DATE 60 DAYS AFTER DATE OF PUBLICATION IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER]", the FAA's five and the NRC's two 30 days — and the Register fills them in for Monday's issue: December 4 for the SEC notices, November 4 for the other seven. The substitution is not always the arithmetic. The NRC's rule is effective 75 days after publication, which by this desk's count lands on Saturday December 19; the issue text prints December 21.

None of this is visible from a headline, and none of it is visible from a feed. It is visible in the first few paragraphs of each document — the part a reader skips, because it looks like boilerplate, and because for most documents it is.

One question, five file numbers: three agencies each split a subject across several documents in the same issue, and handled the pointing three different ways

The Commission tells you there are five

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does the opposite

The Federal Aviation Administration says nothing about the others

What this is actually about

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