Small Business Regulatory Burden & Compliance Cost Calculator

Firm Profile & Operational Scale

Tune firm headcount, wages, and sector to model Trebbi & Zhang (NBER 2023) task-level compliance.

Firm Name

Employee Headcount (FTE) 14 employees

NBER shows inverted U-shape peaking around 500 workers before economies of scale take over.

Average Hourly Wage ($/hr) $24/hr

Baseline benchmark: 2,080 annual labor hours per employee.

Annual Firm Gross Revenue ($) $850,000

Industry Sector (NBER Baseline Compliance Rate)

Source: O*NET regulation-relatedness task mapping across 400,000 OEWS establishments.

Local Jurisdiction & Regulatory Friction

Model state and municipal compliance layers (licensing, inspections, reporting intervals).

Local Tax & Municipal Jurisdictions 3 jurisdictions

US firms must navigate over 10,000 fragmented municipal and state tax jurisdictions.

Operational Counterfactuals & Mandatory Audits

Annual Health & Fire PermitsMandatory local safety inspections Mandatory ADA AuditPremises accessibility inspection Weekly Payroll Tax FilingAccelerated reporting mandates Multi-State NexusOut-of-state sales tax withholding

Empirical Compliance Cost & Burden Metrics Live Model Evaluation

Real-time quantification of wage bills diverted directly into non-revenue compliance tasks.

Annual Compliance Cost

$69,888

8.2% of annual gross revenue

Compliance Labor Share
2.4%
of total firm labor wage bill

Compliance Wage Hours

1,456 hrs

~104 hrs / employee / yr

Annual Gross Wage Bill

$698,880

Total baseline payroll (14 FTE)

Opportunity Cost: Where Diverted Hours & Capital Could Go ~0.70 Full-Time Roles Equivalent

Regulatory Paperwork & Audits 100% of burden ($69,888)

Equivalent Growth Capital: New Equipment & Facility Upgrades $69,888 / yr

Equivalent Growth Capital: Marketing & Customer Acquisition $69,888 / yr

NBER Inverted U-Shape Compliance Curve (Firm Size Distribution) Current: 14 FTE

Trebbi & Zhang found compliance cost intensity rises until ~500 employees, placing peak middle-size friction before corporate enterprise scale efficiencies kick in.

Standard format: JSON & TXT audit report capturing compliance metrics & policy trade-offs.

Grounded Academic Source: Trebbi, F. & Zhang, M. B. (2023). The Cost of Regulatory Compliance in the United States. NBER Working Paper No. 30691. Analysis based on 19,636 O*NET tasks across 400,000 Bureau of Labor Statistics surveyed establishments.