The October 25, 2012 Wall Street Journal’s Small Business column was on how the presidential candidates are not addressing the issues that most concern business owners. Instead, they talk about taxes. FYI, the top three issues in their survey were the cost of health care, access to capital and the economy.
Here’s my take on it. Nobody likes paying taxes, nobody (with maybe a few exceptions out of 350 million citizens) volunteer to pay more than they have to and we all would like to pay less and get more services.
That said, the top tax rate is not all that important if you’re not making enough money to be at that top rate. The owners in the WSJ survey are saying that they government should:
- Get out of the way or make policies easier so they can grow.
- Make it easier to get working capital.
- Remove the costs and uncertainty over things like the Affordable Healthcare Act, which could not only raise the cost of insurance but also add tremendously to the cost of understanding and adhering to the complicated regulations of the bill. (I went to a workshop on this last month and was amazed at the complexity of the bill. It was obviously designed by people who live in an isolated world and never have to implement things like this. And, as a disclaimer, I am in favor of some kind of healthcare reform as I feel what we have now is too expensive and wasteful.)
- Fix the darn economy instead of fighting all the time.
Read the article, it’s very interesting and hits a lot of points that I hear from clients and other owners.
