Having determined the overall level of administrative burden for the various policy areas, an interesting question is to know what the administrative burden is for businesses within a certain industry and within a certain size class. How are businesses in the various industries of the economy affected?

Mistral® is an instrument - developed by EIM - to measure the administrative burdens of businesses per policy area. Examples of policy areas are the VAT area, the areas of income and wage taxes, the area of the annual accounts, etc. Up to now, no results were available by sector and size class. Having determined the overall level of administrative burden for the various policy areas, an interesting question is to know what the administrative burden is for businesses within a certain industry and within a certain size class. How are businesses in the various industries of the economy affected? Does also the size class, of which the firm is part of, matter with respect to the level of administrative burden it has to bear? Recently, EIM developed a special module in Mistral® to calculate industry- and size class-specific administrative burdens for the various policy areas.

Which questions can be answered with the help of this special module of Mistral®?

If policy makers intend to reduce administrative burdens for e.g. the small firms (1-9 employees) or a specific industry (e.g. retail trade) the model offers the possibility now to calculate in advance the reduction of administrative burden to be expected in this specific situation. Another possibility is the breakdown of the yearly monitoring system for the development of administrative burden according to industry and size class.

Which information is in Mistral®?

Mistral® now contains the administrative burdens related to a selection of policy areas that causes about 60% of all administrative burdens of all relevant policy areas in the Netherlands. This information is available:

• On a yearly basis from 1994 onwards, per policy area (e.g. fiscal area), per information obligation (e.g. pay roll tax), per message (e.g. annual return) and per administrative activity (e.g. collecting the required information);
• From 2000 onwards, per policy area broken down by industry (12) and size class (3).

Orders

You can order the report 'Mistral®, A Model to Measure the Administrative Burden of Businesses' (price EUR 21,-) through e-mail: info@eim.nl, by fax (+ 31 79 341 50 24) or by phone (+ 31 79 341 36 34), stating the order number H200110. On receipt of your order an invoice will be enclosed. Alternatively, you can download this publication on our Knowledge Website for SMEs and Entrepreneurship (no charge).