Over at Coyote Blog you can see the steps necessary to open a business in Colorado. It makes me ill just to read it.
He should thankfull he isn't trying to open a business in Denver, where a few extra steps are added.
I don't know how many people are really familiar with the regulatory torture business owners are subjected to. It's part of the reason I no longer am involved in owning a business. It's much easier to be an employee. From that statement you can gather how this sort of bureaucratic rigamorole hurts the economy. Furthermore, scale matters. Small operators are at a serious disadvantage. A larger business can afford accountants and lawyers to deal with these things, but if you don't have a lot of start-up money you have to deal with it all yourself, and if you're not experienced it's very easy to make errors. Errors which lead to fines and more hassles.
Do I sound bitter?
On a larger scale, this is a reason being a libertarian is frustrating. Each one of those registration and taxing requirements started as someones 'good idea,' as in wouldn't it be good idea if we taxed this, or had safety inspections for that? Taken one at a time, each bit of regulation seems innocuous. But in aggregate it's a serious problem.
Posted by Walter at February 18, 2006 01:05 PMThe worst part is dealing with all of the sales tax zones, and the fact that they are not even aligned by ZIP code. So unless you spend a bunch of money on software that geocodes the delivery addresses to calculate their tax zones, you run the risk of either overcollecting for sales tax or undercollecting. Either of which spells trouble if you get audited. You might owe the government a big check in the case of undercollecting, or you might owe your customers a bazillion tiny checks in the case of overcollecting.
Posted by: Michael Ditto at February 18, 2006 02:50 PMBut to be fair(er) to the state, this guy is opening a pretty specialized business that has a lot of liability issues, and at least a couple of his items are federal requirements (coast guard?). Not exactly the same as opening up a shoe store or a software company (not that either of those isn't a headache in and of itself).
Posted by: Michael Ditto at February 18, 2006 02:56 PMI doubt Colorado is any more difficult to deal with than the average US state. It's tough everywhere.
Posted by: Walter at February 18, 2006 03:23 PMThe World Bank's Doing Business in 2005 report says that it takes 5 procedures and 5 days to start a simple business here in the US. By contrast, in Mexico, it's 8 procedures and 58 days. This report has 24 different regulatory measurements on about 150 countries.
Posted by: David Aitken at February 18, 2006 04:31 PMWell Colorado is trickier than most in that we have local sales taxes like I was bitching about above. But that's not going to be a problem for this guy (I'm guessing) since he doesn't ship or deliver product within the state. So maybe he should be thankful he has it so easy. :-)
Posted by: Michael Ditto at February 19, 2006 10:43 AMA question - I noticed you have commentary on "Simon Trinidad" from last year - when he was extradited to the US. I am a PhD student conducting research on the FARC...and am trying to find more info on his current whereabouts (the US Marshalls aren't being cooperative)...any idea where he is currently being held? Who his lawyers are? Etc.?