Whitehall's independent red tape watchdog reckons the govenemmnet has reduced red tape by £2.2 billion a year however the regulatory policy committee has calculated that new EU rules have inmposed £2.3 billion in net costs to businesses. So looks like it's gone up! This is before the pension auto enrolment hots most busiisnesses in 2015 or later. Perhaps the benefit of such a consideration is to check what a business can do itself to avoid red tape and the most obvious way is to outsource so somebody else has to cope. This especially applies to payroll, pension auto - enrolement and even book-keeping, thinking in particular of VAT http://www.bookcheck.co.uk/our-services/bookkeeping