By Simon Quicke31 July 2008
Accountancy specialist Pegasus has called on the government
to reduce the burden of red tape that is imposed on small businesses.
From its position of developing software applications that
attempt to automate a lot of the procedures SMEs face the vendor has carried
out a survey that reveals those struggling to cope with the regulatory burden
feel under growing pressure.
A quarter of the SMEs surveyed by Pegasus said they spent
around two months of the year researching and complying with legislation and
92% of those asked said that sort of pressure was hindering entrepreneurialism
in the UK.
Kevin McCallum, commercial director at Pegasus Software,
said that the government might say that it is trying to reduce the regulatory burden
but for those on the receiving end it didn’t feel like that.
“Time is being spent in areas where it could be more productively
used to do other things,” he said.
He added that technology did have a role to play in making
life easier and automating processes but it often got little notice about what
the government was doing and had to build features into products at a cost to
its own development budget.
A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses said that
red tape and regulations was one of the top issues for its membership.
“If there was less administration then there would be more
time that could be spent elsewhere in their businesses,” he said.
