Compliance

Small businesses are generally successful in the area of compliance, including complying with laws and regulations, keeping customer information secure, and keeping up with laws and regulations (see Figure 22). The perceived level of success has not changed much in the past 12 months.

Figure 22

*Rated 8 to 10 on a 0 to 10 scale, where 10 = completely successful.

Even though compliance is not a problem area, Figure 23 reveals that 54 percent of owners feel that government regulation is becoming more burdensome. This sentiment has also grown in the past year, raising the question of why small businesses have these concerns. One possible explanation for the perception of increasing burdens may be the economy and how it affects the behavior of governments. Local, state and federal agencies may be becoming more stringent in the enforcement of fines and seeking new ways to tax small businesses in an effort to make up for their own revenue shortfall. One example is real estate assessments, an area where local governments are often accused of exaggerating values when they need to raise revenue.

Figure 23