One of the big surprises contained in the research released last month by the Microbusiness Research Institute (MRI) was the microbusiness take on taxes. For years, small business lobbying organizations stoutly asserted that the nation’s small business owners wanted lower tax rates. They do, too, but the MRI research found that more of them want [...]

Small entities — including small businesses, small and local governments and small non- profits — saved $7 billion in first-year costs and $745 million in annual recurring expenses, thanks to the SBA’s Office of Advocacy in its role as enforcer of the Regulatory Flexibility Act (Reg Flex). That’s the big take-away in the Obama Administration’s [...]

Over the past week, the talk on Capitol Hill took a welcome detour for those of us who would like to hear about something besides health care reform because, last week, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) released what has been called a “discussion draft” of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2009 [...]

Misclassification of workers as independent contractors is a pretty widespread problem, according to a report released earlier this month by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The precise extent of misclassification is unknown but, for example, in 1984, the Internal Revenue Service estimated that 3.4 million workers were misclassified by employers resulting in a revenue loss [...]

The Home Office Tax Deduction Simplification and Improvement Act of 2009 was introduced last week in the House (H.R. 3056) by my old friend Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX), and in the Senate (S. 1349) by Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). In both chambers of Congress, the legislation has been referred to their respective [...]

Earlier this month, the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) was working Capitol Hill with a single, simple message: “Dear Congress, Please take it easy on the small business owner.” An excellent opportunity for that sort of thing presented itself when the House Small Business Committee, Subcommittee on Finance and Tax, held its first hearing [...]

Barack Obama may have sailed into the White House on a rousing chorus of The Times They Are A-Changin’, but one thing that hasn’t changed a bit is that the tax gap is a headache for microbusinesses that is not going away. In fact, President Obama has been in office for less than 100 days [...]

In another episode of Great Reruns from Congresses Past, a new bill to create a simplified standard home office deduction was introduced in the House last week. This time, the bipartisan legislation, astonishingly entitled the “Home Office Deduction Simplification Act of 2009″ (H.R. 1509), was sponsored by John McHugh (R-NY) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR). As [...]

Another item from previous sessions of Congress that has returned for an encore is the Equity for Our Nation’s Self-Employed Act of 2009 (H.R. 1470), introduced by Congressmen Ron Kind (D-WI), Wally Herger (R-CA), Suzanne M. Kosmas (D-Fla.) and David G. Reichert (R-WA). The bill is another gem of bipartisan legislative simplicity, the bulk of [...]

Last week, the SBA Office of Advocacy released its report on Regulatory Flexibility Act enforcement and compliance for fiscal 2008, the last such report detailing the results achieved under former Chief Counsel Tom Sullivan. The report includes updated information on federal agency compliance with the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) and E.O. 13272, agency compliance with [...]