Maintaining that small businesses are "the heart of the American economy because they drive innovation," President Bush on March 19 announced a package of tax incentives designed to help small entities. The package, which was unveiled at a White House summit on Women's Entrepreneurship, includes provisions on tax simplification, employee health care assistance, and regulatory reform.
The President’s agenda for small businesses includes the following elements:
· new tax incentives for job-creating investments, including: increasing business expensing for new investments from $25,000 to $40,000, tax simplification for service-oriented businesses with less than $10 million in gross receipts, and permanent repeal of the estate tax
· improved access to health care, including: allowing small business to form association health plans, and improving access to Medical Savings Accounts
· regulatory reform, including: strengthening the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy, increasing coordination between the Office of Advocacy and the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), allowing small businesses to earn interest on their checking accounts, seeking comments from small businesses on ways to improve federal regulations, and strengthening enforcement of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, which requires federal agencies to prepare detailed analyses of the impact of federal regulations on small businesses
· improved access to federal contracting, including: ensuring that government contracts are open to all small businesses, avoiding unnecessary contract bundling, and streamlining the appeals process for small businesses that contract with the federal government; and
· improved access to information for small businesses through the use of federal government websites.
Some of these items can be accomplished by Executive Order, such as the proposal to strengthen the SBA Office of Advocacy. (ILMA has worked closely with this office in the past.) However, others must be accomplished through legislation.
The White House fact sheet on the President’s Small Business Agenda is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/smallbusiness/information.html .
