L-1B has no prevailing-wage requirement, but the developer must remain employed by the petitioning organization; where the pay comes from is an employment and tax question, not a visa condition. Government fees are in the USCIS fee schedule.
Separate the fee schedule from the payroll decision
Hypothetical example: Unlike some other work classifications, L-1B does not require the employer to certify a prevailing wage. The Portugal Cove-St. Philip's company may keep the developer on Canadian payroll during the assignment or move the developer to the affiliate's payroll; either can be consistent with L-1B, provided the employment relationship with the qualifying organization continues and the affiliate, not the hatchery, controls the work. The government charges are the Form I-129 filing fee, the fraud-prevention fee, applicable employer-size surcharges and optional premium processing, all published in Form G-1055 and dependent on the petitioner's own facts. Costs that are not immigration fees include the reviewer's professional fee, the cost of assembling proprietary-knowledge evidence, travel and accommodation at the hatchery, and any per-diem. A customer that reimburses the affiliate for the developer's time is a normal commercial arrangement; the reimbursement should be for the system delivery, not presented as the customer paying the developer.
Hypothetical example: a remote-sensing software company transfers a specialist whose knowledge is documented in a secure code repository. Before filing, the company must decide how to demonstrate the knowledge without disclosing unnecessary customer data or source code. Budget for a carefully prepared technical declaration, redacted exhibits, and any translation or record retrieval, separately from the official filing charges. The resulting evidence plan is useful because it identifies which internal records require approval and who can authenticate them. Paying a filing fee alone does not create persuasive proof of specialized knowledge.