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The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to “reform or repeal” the sales and marketing fees it has allowed mutual funds to charge for the past quarter century. Now two Congressmen have floated legislation that would push for changes to the fee structure and that would alter the way costs are disclosed to investors.

A lot of interested parties have weighed in on the debate, couching their suggestions in legalese and self-interested protectionism.

So allow me to make it clear to the regulators and legislators the one and only course for real reform:

Just give us the darn cost!

If anyone is serious about real reform and disclosure, this is the only honest solution. Quote costs only in one single figure that delivers all-inclusive, out-the-door, no-fine-print, no-excuses, this-is-the-cost-of-owning-the-fund honesty.

If it makes the lawyers and the fund managers happy, they can stick a breakdown of those fees somewhere beneath the definitive expenses number and a chart showing how the costs will add up over time.

This whole issue actually stems back to 1980, when the SEC issued the “12b-1 rule,” allowing funds to charge fees – beyond ordinary operating expenses – to cover the sales and marketing of the fund.

Fast forward to 2007, and it’s easy to see that what was intended as a temporary fix has become a nightmarish fixture. More than 70 percent of funds now have 12b-1 fees, according to the Investment Company Institute; fund firms say that 12b-1 fees give investors the ability to pay for financial advice over time, rather than all at once – which is true – but they also use the fees to pay for space in fund “supermarkets,” the brokerage super-store platforms for investments.

In fact, a “no-load fund,” – meaning one purportedly without sales charges – is allowed to carry a 12b-1 fee of up to 0.25 percent.

The vagaries in what the fee covers are where the confusion starts. Throw in the fact that fund firms have always wanted to break out the sales and marketing costs from the actual management fees, in order to make their pay seem reasonable. It’s akin to car dealers quoting prices exclusive of taxes, title and other charges when the consumer is most interested in what it will take, in total, to drive the car home.

For average investors, the breakdown of fees is interesting, but also irrelevant. The two key factors driving fund sales are performance and costs, not whether a fund gets to a certain fund level by having a 12b-1 fee or not.

There has been talk that regulators should “externalize” 12b-1 charges, applying them at the individual account level rather than deducting them from fund assets. For reasons too complicated to explain here, this plan would be a tax nightmare; moreover, it would force a radical change in fund accounting, and shareholders would eventually pay the freight for the new systems.

So if 12b-1 fees are not going away – and they’re not – investors should hope for a simple, three-step resolution to fee disclosure: