#9: Cut paperwork for business by 50%

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People love buying things online because it cuts down on the hassle of the transaction. Online shopping is especially popular with people who have corporate or government credit cards, because it's much easier to buy with those cards than to go through formal purchasing processes. What's quick and easy attracts new business.

We're competing against ourselves

Sales tax paperwork alone is ludicrous

Less paperwork would be better for business because there would be less deadweight

Whatever it is now, it could be half that. It can always be cut in half if you're really dedicated to the idea.

There's always some form of paperwork that can be reduced. If you can't find a way to do your work more efficiently, you're probably not trying very hard.

Cutting paperwork would cut the public payroll, contributing to our fiscal discipline -- more money for cancer research

A lighter paperwork burden would improve the climate for entrepreneurial-minded individuals to start and grow their own businesses, which is the best kind of economic growth

The less time business owners have to spend doing paperwork, the more time they have to grow their businesses and improve their communities by actually creating revenue and jobs

Iowa is in competition with every other US state, and we don't have endowments like the oil wealth of Alaska or the massive pension accumulations of the snowbirds living in Arizona and Florida. What we do have to offer is, as the old state slogan went, "A place to grow." We probably can't bribe people with super-low taxes, so we have to do our best to make the regulatory climate as easy as possible in order to compensate.

It's not just a matter of how much we have compared to other states, either -- it's the message we send by cutting what paperwork we have. You should never have to give the same government the same information twice in a year; if credit-card companies and mortgage lenders can handle all of the necessary information to make our transactions seamless, so can the state.

Anyone who's ever driven through rural Iowa in the fall has seen farmers working to harvest their crops -- from early morning until late in the night. That's because there's not a moment to waste at harvest time: The weather can turn at any moment, so they have to maximize the time spent in order to stay afloat. For business, every season is harvest season. Real estate is hot in the summer, retail sales in the run-up to Christmas. Auto body shops are busy with wintertime car wrecks, roof repairers in the springtime hail season. For every business, the busy season (and really every season) is like harvest time to farmers. The job may not be as obvious as a half-harvested field of corn, but the imperative to get the job done nonetheless is high. Time spent on "other" things -- like regulations and taxes -- is a distraction from the harvest.
  • What government should do:
  • What individuals should do:

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This page contains a single entry by Brian Gongol published on June 26, 2009 2:02 PM.

#10: Grow a network of private clubs for community betterment was the previous entry in this blog.

#8: Add a sunset provision to every new law is the next entry in this blog.

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