BY MARK CASEY
I have a plan for how to fix the economy. It’s a little strange sounding at first, but then, most simple ideas are.
I think President-elect Obama should declare a complete and total moratorium on taxes for small businesses for at least two years, until the economy begins to recover. No payroll taxes, no capital gains taxes, no income taxes. None.
Our government is currently considering yet another bailout for yet another failed industry. This time, it’s the American auto industry, which slit its own throat by ignoring its labor costs and trying to market unappealing, unsustainable products to consumers who were showing clear indications that they wanted something else.
As they ask the government for billions in bailout money, we’re hearing the same arguments we heard with the banks — these businesses are too big to fail. The three million jobs they supply to Americans are too many to let disappear.
Maybe. But as long as we’re throwing chunks of the government’s revenue at the economy, how about we throw it at the body responsible for nearly 80 percent of America’s jobs? That would be small businesses, which create 78.9 percent of all new jobs, according to the Small Business Association.
And under my plan, we wouldn’t be giving money away to failed, irresponsible businesses that the market is actively trying to kill off. We’d be giving relief and opportunity to businesses which, by definition, are doing well — start-ups, entrepreneurs, and rapidly growing companies. And if they don’t do well, no amount of tax relief will save them anyway.
Entrepreneurs are the driving spirit of this country, and of the economy. It is from small businesses that innovation comes, and it is from small businesses that our Next Big Things come. We should make it as easy for those businesses to thrive as possible.
But just like with the big bailouts, this shouldn’t be a blank check for people who don’t need it. I would go even further than Obama in limiting the tax moratorium. Where he limits his tax cuts to the 98 percent of businesses and individuals making less than $250,000, I would suggest limiting the moratorium to businesses with fewer than 20 employees, plain and simple.
Just as Obama’s tax plan reflects, we shouldn’t be in the business of pampering thriving companies. We should be in the business of encouraging new ones.
Now, this may seem like an odd suggestion for Obama, whose tax plan was accused of being harmful to small businesses. But in fact, Obama already has special considerations for small businesses built into his tax plan, which he tried to explain in his now-famous conversation with Joe the Plumber.
According to Obama’s platform, these considerations include a 50 percent tax credit to help cover costs on things like employee health care, and the complete elimination of capital gains taxes for small businesses.
So already, it seems as though the president-elect is kicking around the same sorts of ideas that I am. This is good news for my plans to run for president in 2016. But the problem is, during the PR wrangling of the election, Republican spin masters — including Joe the Plumber — convinced a lot of people that Obama wants to take everyone’s money and give it to communists in the Middle East.
A gesture like a total moratorium on small business taxes would go a long way to shore up confidence in investment, not to mention confidence in Obama’s economic prowess.
And if the recent skittishness of the stock market is any indication, it seems as though investor confidence is the end-all, be-all of our markets.
Powerful, simplistic messages may be the best weapon we have to calm a fretful economy.
— Mark Casey is a freelance writer from Brownsburg and winner of the Flyer Idol competition.
