Abstract
This paper reports on a small-scale study of the compliance costs of small New Zealand businesses. Participating firms were asked to keep a record of both time spent and expenditure directly incurred over a thirteen-week period. This differs from previous studies that rely on a firm’s recall of how much time has been spent on compliance over the previous year. The results suggest that New Zealand small businesses, on average, spend less time, but a similar amount of money, on compliance than has been indicated in previous studies. A number of firms do perceive compliance to be a major issue, and in some cases this perception prevents firms from expanding.