Tax regulation and small business in the USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand

This article provides a review of the literature on the compliance costs of tax regulations borne by small firms in the USA, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The article concludes that in the USA and the UK the compliance costs of taxation comprise the largest single element of the compliance burden faced by businesses and this is probably also true for Australia and New Zealand. All of the countries studied offer best practice guidelines for assessing the costs of proposed regulations. However, despite government deregulation and simplification initiatives that in some cases began in the early 1980s in the countries reviewed, there is no evidence that progress is being made in reducing or even containing the burden of tax regulations affecting small businesses.