Bureaucracy is a tax on small companies

There's a tax nobody voted for.

It isn't on any payslip. It doesn't appear on an invoice. And small companies pay much more of it than big ones.

It's called paperwork.

Same form, different price

A form is a form. It asks the same questions whether you're a corporation with three hundred people or two partners in Girona.

The difference is who fills it in.

In a big company there's a department for that. Someone whose job is precisely to read the small print, chase the missing document and call the office that doesn't answer. That person's hour costs what it costs, and the company barely notices.

In a company like ours, that department is me. Or Yeray. Usually after the real work is done, when we should be looking after a client or building the product.

Same form. Very different bill.

Bureaucracy charges everyone the same hours. That's exactly why it's unfair.

The grant that costs money

The clearest example is public aid.

On paper, it's designed to help small businesses. In practice, a lot of it seems designed by people who've never had to wait for it.

Documents. Justifications. Deadlines that move. And then the wait, which can stretch for many months between applying and seeing the money.

A big company can live with that. It has cash to bridge the gap and staff to handle the file. A small business often has neither. So the aid ends up helping most the ones who need it least.

We've worked with these programmes. I've seen what they ask of a company of two, and of the clients we serve: small clubs, small businesses, people who already have another job. The money is real. So is the time it eats.

And time, for a small company, is the scarcest thing there is. It's the only thing I can't invoice twice.

What I've decided about it

I'm not going to fight the system in a blog post. That would be naive, and the system wouldn't read it anyway.

But I have decided a few things for myself.

First, I count paperwork as a cost. Not as "admin" that happens in the gaps. If something needs ten hours of forms, it costs ten hours, and those hours need to be worth it.

Second, I don't build plans that only work if someone else's file moves fast. If a project depends on a grant arriving on time, it doesn't depend on us. And I don't like depending on a queue.

Third, I try to spare clients the same tax when I can. If they're waiting on a procedure, sometimes the most useful thing we can offer isn't a better website. It's not having to wait.

None of this makes the forms disappear. It just stops them from deciding our calendar.

The quiet advantage

There's a strange upside, I'll admit.

Because paperwork is so expensive for us, we've learned to avoid anything that brings more of it without bringing value. Fewer programmes. Fewer applications just in case. Fewer things that look free.

Patient money from clients has many virtues. One of them is that it comes without a form.

A client pays an invoice. Done.

I've never had to justify a monthly fee in triplicate.

P.S. This post required no supporting documents. Enjoy it while it lasts.