National CEO Survey: Business regulation |
Sponsored by Deloitte this quarter’s Australian Industry Group: National CEO Survey is focussed on the impact business regulation is having on the productivity of Australian businesses, particularly in the manufacturing, services and construction sectors.
Based on the responses of 322 CEOs nationally it is estimated that the average business spends almost four percent of its annual costs on complying with regulation. Other key survey findings include:
- Almost 70 per cent of respondents have experienced a rise in compliance costs over the past three years and 75 per cent expect a rise in compliance costs in the next three years
- Around 80 per cent of total compliance costs are in the form of payments made to external service providers (accountants, lawyers etc)
- 67 per cent of respondents report that waiting for regulatory decisions is associated with the greatest costs
- Around 27 per cent of respondents indicated there are significant regulatory barriers to changing workplace practices
- Occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers compensation schemes require the most compliance time according to 15 per cent of respondents
- Regulations associated with importing and exporting activities are the most time consuming compliance activity for around 10 per cent of businesses
- Regulations associated with employing workers (superannuation, monitoring award changes) are highly time consuming for over 9 per cent of respondents
- Larger (100 employees or more) businesses spend relatively more time (27.2 hours per week) compared to medium (16.8 hours) or small businesses (7.3 hours) on compliance related activities
- The rise in compliance costs over the last three years has been driven by greater demands relating to OHS, environment protection and taxation
- Around 37 per cent of respondents anticipate that carbon pricing related regulation will be the major driver of increased compliance costs in the next three years
- Almost 20 per cent of respondents believe there should be some consolidation of information provided to regulatory agencies, including:
- Workers compensation and workplace incident reports to State and national OHS regulators
- Payroll tax across different States
- Business activity statements (BAS)
- Around 20 per cent of respondents believe regulatory information is difficult to find or not available.
Please click on the attachment below to download the full report.
National CEO Survey: Business regulation
(3563.81 KB)
