Supporting small business

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Sam Smith, 2011 - One good way to draw sharply the contrast between large corporate practices and those of the kind of commercial activities that Americans admire is to support small business. Strangely, neither major political party does and therefore many issues get ignored. For example, the number of laws in this country have more than doubled in the last few decades and many of these have meant more headaches for small business. For a corporation with a staff of 10,000, doing the extra legal and paper work is not a problem, but for a business with a staff of six it can be a significant new headache. Here’s just one example, described by Ehow Money:

|||| Starting January 1, 2012, the number of Form 1099s that will be processed will be required to increase. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, set new requirements for issuing IRS Form 1099s to taxpayers. Under the old regulations, certain financial transactions were excluded from Form 1099 and federal tax reporting. Under the new law, any vendor accumulating $600 over the year, regardless of the source of income, will require a Form 1099 if the income is not IRS Form W-2 reportable.

A CPA will be required to generate additional Form 1099s to be distributed to vendors. Current software programs will need improvements to perform Form 1099 production under the new regulations. Small business owners may require a full-time certified public accountant to handle the new reporting and recording procedures. Every Form 1099 received that has a value greater than zero dollars will be reported on the tax return for the filing period. ||||

Unfortunately, many well intended laws – often the product of grad school liberals lacking any small business experience – produce substantial new problems for small businesses that helps their owners to think, albeit wrongly, that the Republicans are their solution.

Politicians of both parties also tend to favor larger firms with various forms of subsidies such as tax relief, while showing little interest in helping smaller ones.

Liberals and progressives need to learn much more from small business operators, find out about their problems, and respond to them in a sensible way. The potential payoff is major.

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