According to a study by the SBA, on a per-employee basis, it costs small firms about $2,400 per year to meet annual federal regulatory requirements. These costs are particularly burdensome for small businesses. Why does this matter?

Because:

# Represent more than 99.7 percent of all employers.
# Employ more than half of all private sector employees
# Pay 44.5 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
# Generate 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually.
# Create more than 50 percent of non-farm private gross domestic product (GDP).
# Supplied 22.8 percent of the total value of federal prime contracts (about $50 billion) in FY 2001.
# Produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.
# Are employers of 39 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer workers ) .
# Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises.
# Made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced 29 percent of the known export value in FY 2001.

Instead of wagging our finger at India and China, if we want to do something about losing jobs at home, reducing regulatory burdens for small businesses would be a great start. (Are you listening Washington?).

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 1st, 2006 at 5:50 pm by Insider and is filed under Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.