Compliance as a Fixed Cost: Administrative Burden and the Smallest Firms

Abstract

A tax rate is proportional by design. The cost of complying with it is not, because understanding a rule, keeping the records it requires and filing the returns it demands cost roughly the same whatever the firm's turnover. This study treats that asymmetry as a distributive instrument in its own right and asks what the evidence establishes about who bears it. The method is a structured conceptual review of research published between 2017 and 2024 across tax compliance costs, tax digitalisation, subsidised credit, banking access and administrative burden in public programmes. Five findings follow. Compliance cost is substantially fixed, so its incidence falls as a share of turnover and rises as a share of the smallest firms' margin, making it regressive by construction rather than by policy choice. Digital tax administration reduces the burden only where the firm already possesses the complementary capability, so an instrument justified as simplification can widen the gap it was meant to close. Credit instruments designed for the same firms carry their own application burden, and the evidence on guaranteed and subsidised lending finds effects concentrated among firms that were already bankable. Presence is not access: branch density raises the odds that small firms adopt conservative debt-avoiding policies rather than borrowing. And the burden is measurable with instruments already in use, which means its absence from regulatory impact assessment is a choice. The study proposes that compliance cost be estimated before a rule is issued and reported by firm size band.