Kerry Offers Plan for Small Businesses

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Recalling his days as the owner of a muffin and cookie shop, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Friday proposed new measures to help small businesses compete for federal contracts and provide health insurance to employees.

Kerry called for less bundling of federal contracts, which groups smaller contracts and can make it harder for small businesses to compete for them. He said the number and size of bundled contracts have reached a 10-year high.

<snip>

The Massachusetts senator said he would make it easier and more affordable for businesses to invest in technology. He called for changes to the tax laws to allow small businesses to immediately write off technology investments, rather than having to space out the tax breaks over several years.

Small businesses are drowning in tax paperwork, Kerry said, especially those that do business in multiple states. He wanted to allow state and federal employment tax returns to be filed on a single form.

To make it easier for small businesses to set up pension plans, Kerry supported a pension pooling fund to help share the cost - as much as $20,000, he said - among multiple companies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3578627,00.html

[donco6]

1. Bundled bids are a scam, of course.

If you want a certain company to win a bid, you bundle together the projects in such a way that only one, maybe two, companies can even put together a proposal. The small companies can't even challenge the bid, because they'd be up against the U.S. Government.

I like Kerry's attention to this problem.