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 [...]

I suppose it’s possible that all sorts of Americans in different circumstances and different walks of life might have different ways of “celebrating” April 15th — Tax Day — in addition to a dramatic wipe of the brow and a declaration that it’s Miller Time®. On Capitol Hill, where it probably should not be expected [...]

Late last month, the House passed the Small Business and Infrastructure Jobs Tax Act of 2010 (H.R. 4849), which does all sorts of things that are supposed to inspire small business owners to create jobs while simultaneously including enough revenue raisers to avoid falling afoul of those PAYGO rules. For example, this bill attempts to [...]

Now, it is entirely possible that another hearing before another committee would have produced the sorts of witnesses who would have gratified that particular questioner with answers that reinforced his pre-existing ideas.

If you watch enough of these hearings, you see it fairly frequently. The Committee Member will question their own witness or someone who they can tell from prepared testimony already agrees with them. They will phrase questions in such a way as to get the witness to make their favorite points for them. It is all for the sake of the record.

But we have to be glad that didn’t happen in this case, because nobody learns anything that way, do they?

As much as I enjoy myth-busting, there is one bit of Congressional lore that I would have a difficult time refuting: tax-writing Congressional committees under Democrats are not friendly to small businesses. House Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) has openly said that the Ways and Means Committee was not particularly friendly to small [...]

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 [...]

Overall, America’s small businesses have an effective tax rate of close to 20%, according to an analysis released last week by the SBA Office of Advocacy. The analysis, accurately if unexcitingly entitled Effective Federal Income Tax Rates Faced by Small Businesses in the United States, was performed by Quantria Strategies with funding from Advocacy. More [...]

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 [...]