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 [...]

Over the next two weeks, the House will be considering the broad, sweeping economic recovery legislation we’ve all been hearing about since Election Day, and several House Committees have released details of the parts of the proposal that fall under their jurisdiction last week. From those slightly more detailed descriptions, it would appear that there [...]

It seems these days that Congress, having been sworn in last week, has a bet with itself to see how much can be accomplished before January 20th. Over in the Senate, for example, the scramble is on to hold as many confirmation hearings as possible. That’s only practical. Once he becomes unhyphenated President Barack Obama, [...]

Nobody said those tax breaks don’t help any of the businesses designated as ‘small’ by SBA guidelines, Mr. Chabot. Nobody said the tax breaks were bad, per se. In fact, they are probably a wonderful thing for those firms that make the kind of large investments that generate worthwhile returns from said tax breaks.

But, while they are a great thing for less than 10% of small businesses — including a few of your small business constituents, no doubt — it is important for you to note that the other 90% of small businesses get little to no benefit from them.

We’re not going to pretend that we don’t have major party nominees for the 2008 presidential election, even if the party conventions that will make those nominees “official” haven’t happened yet. So, we’ll just say that presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have both put forth tax plans with which to woo voters. If [...]

A new report released recently by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommends that enforcement action to address the tax gap should focus on the small number of large dollar non-compliant taxpayers, regardless of their structure — corporation, partnership, sole proprietor or individual. That, said panelists at a forum jointly hosted last September by the GAO, [...]

Representative John McHugh, Republican of New York, introduced legislation last week that would create a standard deduction for business use of the home. His deduction would be $1,500 and would be indexed to inflation. This might be much more exciting news if it weren’t for the fact that there are already two other bills with [...]