According to research, the cost of tax compliance has more than doubled for small businesses over the last 17 years. The research is the first instalment of a 3-year research project into the viability of Australia’s tax system sponsored by the Institute of Chartered Accountants. “For small businesses, the cost of tax compliance has more than doubled over the last 17 years. On average, it costs small businesses $11,950 just to collect GST, bringing to light the question of whether they are acting as unpaid tax collectors for the Government. In addition, small businesses are spending 4 times as many hours per year complying with tax obligations as they did 17 years ago,” said the Institute’s Tax Counsel, Paul Stacey. He said the research also indicated that “the practice of building special concessions into the tax law to ameliorate that burden for small business is largely ineffective”.
Source: ICAA media release, 20 September 2012
[LTN 184, 21/9]