National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen has issued her annual report to Congress, in which she is required to describe for policy makers the taxpayers’ major challenges for that particular fiscal year. Olsen adds her voice to the growing chorus of dismayed observers who express concern about the newly increased reporting requirements contained in the Patient [...]

It has been more than a year now since President Obama nominated Dr. Winslow Sargeant to be Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy. Back then, his nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship was such a cordial affair that it’s difficult to believe there could be so much controversy [...]

There’s a problem. The problem is that there are some “unscrupulous” employers that take advantage of the desperation in the labor market to deliberately misclassify employees as independent contractors. That means that the employees involved probably are not properly filing IRS Schedule C, contributing to the tax gap, and law-abiding employers are (allegedly) at a [...]

Amidst all the jumping up and down and yelling about the health care reform bill that was signed into law earlier this year, very little attention was paid to an obscure provision about 1099s. But that obscure tax provision is expected to increased the tax compliance paperwork burden for microbusinesses by an absurd 1250%, according [...]

Last week, the House Committee on Small Business dusted off one of its perpetual favorites among small business issues when Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez convened a hearing on small businesses in the federal procurement marketplace. As the Chairwoman pointed out in her opening statement, small business owners are saying that their biggest challenge isn’t access to [...]

Perspective really is everything. Late last month, Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship Ranking Member Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Committee Member Mark Pryor (D-AK) were patting themselves and each other on the back for their bipartisan legislative proposal, the Job Impact Analysis Act of 2010 (S. 3024). Their dignified happy dance reflected the times. [...]

Hey, it’s Sunshine Week! Sunshine Week is an initiative spearheaded by journalists nationwide to bring attention to open government and freedom of information. Since Sunshine Week is all about open access to information from and about the government, it is particular appropriate that legislation that will go pretty far in improving your access to that [...]

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 [...]