Death By A Thousand Cuts

Think about the amount of time and money you spend on compliance paperwork and expensive legal services to take care of your government obligations and then ask yourself how does this make you, your staff or business any better at servicing vehicles? It doesn’t.

“Death by a thousand cuts” is an often-used metaphor based on a particularly gruesome form of execution practiced in Imperial China centuries ago. It’s also a good description of what’s facing small business owners from coast-to-coast, including the repair aftermarket. We’re creeping, slowly but surely, into an age where small businesspeople are so discouraged by high costs, needless bureaucracy and endless administrative delays that they simply give up. And worse, they’ll start to encourage their children to abandon thoughts of entrepreneurship in our industry.

It came upon us slowly and imperceptibly. Labour laws, health and safety laws, building and fire codes, business licenses, Provincial and Federal tax filings, payroll deductions and taxes withheld for employees, liability insurance, credit — the list goes on and on. Think about the amount of time and money you spend on compliance paperwork and expensive legal services to take care of your government obligations and then ask yourself how does this make you, your staff or business any better at servicing vehicles? It doesn’t.

It does sap your strength, and your businesses vitality too, diverting hard-fought cash from reinvesting in your core competency and funding an ever growing bureaucracy that threatens to swallow our nation whole. I understand there are provinces where a third of all employment is in the public sector, a serious issue if you think about where those salaries come from. Bureaucracy saps a nation’s strength because it doesn’t create wealth, but diverts it from useful employment. And no one, Conservative, Liberal or NDP cares about this because most politicians have never struggled to earn a living as an independent business owner and never will. Our Federal tax law is so complex that simple wage earners have to hire tax preparers to fill out the forms. Even the CRA issues regular memoranda explaining the latest interpretation of a code that’s something like half a million words long in total. Are we nuts?

If I ran things, (I know, nobody has asked me) starting and running a business would go like this: Phone or log onto a government Web site, pay 20 bucks and open your doors. All taxes would be value-added, like the GST. You pay, and you collect. No other taxes on wages, property, income, chewing gum or anything else. Inspections, compliance issues, etc. are all handled through one government rep that visits your business and gets it done in one visit. Any form or math that can’t be done by a high-school kid would be eliminated. Rules would be written in plain English. Bureaucrats would make life simple or lose their jobs, period. It could be done in a revenue-neutral way, and I’ll bet that it could also be done without major layoffs in the public sector as economic growth skyrockets.

This is not a Conservative, Liberal or NDP issue. It’s not right-wing or left-wing. I don’t care who delivers health care or how long we should be in Afghanistan if small business is choking under the weight of government at all levels. What can we do? Bitch. Complain. But do it to somebody in charge, whether it’s a town councillor, MLA or your MP. Take a minute and send an E-mail. Call them. This is happening because we’ll tell our barber’s what’s wrong with the system before we’ll tell our politicians. End of Lecture. Besides, I just cut a knuckle, dropped an O-ring and the bulb in my greasy trouble light just burned out. Again. And that’s another thing the lawyers won’t understand!

Do you agree? Disagree? Let us know! letterstotheeditor@ssgm.com