Obama tax reform plan 'snubs' small biz — NFIB

WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 30, 2013) — The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) is taking President Obama to task for ignoring the concerns of small business owners in the corporate tax reform proposals he made public today.

"Once again President Obama has made a major policy speech without offering anything of substance to the real engine of the U.S. economy — small business," said NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner, referring to Mr. Obama's economics policy speech delivered today at an Amazon.com distribution center in Chattanooga, Tenn.

"A corporate-only approach to tax reform will ensure that small business shoulders a much greater tax burden than mega-corporations that have been gaming the system for years."

Claiming that more than three-fourths of all small businesses in the U.S. are taxed at the individual rate, Mr. Danner said the president's plan focuses only on corporate reform, which will "disadvantage the innovators, the job creators and the leading pillars of local communities.

"Any discussion of tax reform must include both corporate and individual rates so that there is a level playing field for businesses of all sizes," he said.

In his speech, Mr. Obama called on Congress to:

• simplify the tax code for businesses to create jobs and spur economic growth'
• eliminate loopholes while lowering the top business tax rate to no higher than 28 percent
• simplify tax filing; and
• increase incentives for small businesses to invest.

According to a White House summary of the speech, the reform plan calls for a "pro-growth tax reform and jobs package that would be offset using one-time revenues" raised during the transition to a new business tax system.

The transition revenue would support investments in modernizing the country's infrastructure, creating new manufacturing hubs and training workers for the jobs of tomorrow.

At the same time, the summary states, Mr. Obama remains committed to pursuing a long-term deficit reduction deal that includes revenue-raising individual tax reform and a balanced approach to replacing the damaging sequester.

Specific to small business, Mr. Obama called for making tax filing procedures simpler and to allow businesses to expense up to $1 million in investments, providing them with an incentive to invest in new plants and equipment and removing a source of complexity in the tax code.

Others specifics from the proposal include:

• Increase the minimum wage to the level it was at the beginning of the Reagan Administration in 1981, while indexing it for inflation and raising the tipped minimum wage.
• Support U.S. exports through various trade promotion and worker training initatives;
• Strengthen U.S. manufacturing communities through tax credits to allow hard-hit communities to attract new investment; and
• Increase investment in clean energy research.