NYT:
Small-Business Owners Respond to Obama Plan<...>
The president’s speech split advocates for small business along predictable lines. The National Federation of Independent Business, the conservative-leaning small-business lobbying group, panned it as “more of the same” in an e-mailed statement that cited “the threat of higher taxes and the thousands of pending federal regulations.”
“Small businesses need the government out of their way,” said Dan Danner, the group’s president and chief executive, in the statement. “Tax breaks are always a welcome help to small businesses, especially in these tough economic times. But those outlined tonight by the president are temporary, and avoid the question of meaningful business tax reform.”
The National Small Business Association, a more centrist organization, was more generous in its praise of the tax cuts. “Offering a payroll tax holiday can help all small employers — not just the profitable ones who benefit from an income tax cut — with some much-needed cash while at the same time making it a bit more affordable to bring on new employees,” said Todd McCracken, the group’s president and chief executive, in a statement. But the N.S.B.A. joined the N.F.I.B. in calling for a lighter regulatory burden for businesses and demanded a far-reaching overhaul of the whole tax code, not just for corporations.
These concerns resonated even with the president’s invited guests. Mr. Catalano said that he was wary of the president’s pledge to pay for the package by asking the “wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.” Mr. Catalano said that because his company was organized as an S Corporation, in which profits are passed through to shareholders, he would then face higher taxes. But, he said, “my partner and I have reinvested 100 percent of the profits that our agency has made over the last five years back into the company. If the government takes a bigger share of that from me, it directly impedes my ability to grow the agency.”
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Summary: Give us more incentives, don't raise our taxes and get rid of all regulations.
NYT:
Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Hiring Spur<...>
For others, the math just does not add up. Roger Tung, the chief executive of Concert Pharmaceuticals, said the company, a privately held biotechnology firm with 45 employees, would save $150,000 a year from the proposed corporate payroll tax deductions.
But that is still not enough to cover the cost of hiring even one additional employee at the Lexington, Mass., company, Mr. Tung said, once benefits and other expenses besides salary are included. He can hire, he said, only when investors become confident again and the company can raise more money.
Economists estimated that President Obama’s plan, costing an estimated $447 billion if it were ever fully adopted, could create anywhere from 500,000 to nearly two million jobs next year.
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“If I get a $4,000 benefit for hiring you and I pay you $80,000 and you’re going to sit at your desk and do nothing because there’s nothing to do,” said Marty Regalia, chief economist of the United States Chamber of Commerce, “then the businesses aren’t going to hire you.”
Love, Chamber of Commerce.
Then there are pieces like these:
Massachusetts businesses say the temporary tax cuts and other aid in President Obama’s proposed jobs plan could give a much needed lift to unemployed, struggling workers, and the sputtering economy, but it misses the mark on several fronts, such as helping more firms get access to the capital they need to grow.
linkWASHINGTON -- President Obama presented his "American Jobs Act" as a common-sense quick fix for the American economy -- but some Western New York business leaders and lawmakers think it's just the beginning.
While largely praising the president's plan to offer job-creating tax breaks, help struggling state and local governments and ramp up highway and bridge construction, local leaders offered plenty of suggestions that would go above and beyond what Obama proposed.
And along with that plethora of suggestions, Buffalo-area leaders echoed a common theme.
"The fact that there's at least the beginnings of a plan that will require debate and dialogue is a positive," said John Koelmel, CEO of First Niagara Financial Group, who attended Obama's speech before Congress on Thursday. "I think the substance of what's on the table, for me, it's way more repackaging of prior initiatives, thoughts and ideas" than new plans.
linkIn a persuasive speech before a joint session of Congress last night, President Barack Obama revealed his American Jobs Act, which he hopes will improve unemployment and get Americans working again.
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President Obama announced tax cuts for small businesses that hire new workers or raise current workers' wages, and a special tax credit of $4,000 for employers that hire people who have been out of work for more than six months.
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Small businesses could even be boosted by the public works project he described that hearkens back to a New Deal-approach to creating jobs and an effort to renovate 35,000 new schools. "The president talked about infrastructure improvements in roads and rail lines—these are all types of projects that get lots of small business involved," said Charles Green, the executive director of the Small Business Finance Institute.
Other specific drives he delineated to invigorate small businesses: Make it easier for small businesses to obtain—and get paid for—federal contracts, and facilitate start-up capital-raising and initial public offerings by eliminating red tape that can get in the way. The president said he will seek to speed up the patent process "so that entrepreneurs can turn a new idea into a new business as quickly as possible."
link<...>
But David J. Tufts thought the president struck just the right tone. When Tufts joined The Marketing Directors in 2007, the Atlanta-based real estate marketing company was in expansion mode. By the end of 2009, the luxury condominium market in "Hotlanta" had cooled.
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"He said he's going to take it to the public," Tufts said. "I think he made his case very well that sometimes you have to spend money to make money. ... The logjam needs to be broken."
link<...>
For Michigan small-business owners, some provisions are welcome news — such as a cut to the portion of payroll taxes paid by employers.
"Anything that helps support small business is something that I'm obviously going to get behind," said Mark Winter, founder and principal of Bingham Farms-based Identity Marketing & Public Relations. "We're a growing company and we're very actively looking for players right now, so it's music to my ears to hear any public official willing to make adjustments to help business."
The proposed cut isn't enough to justify hiring new employees, he said, but would help the company's bottom line.
"If his payroll tax comes to fruition and we realize some benefit to that, it is certainly going to help," Winter said. "It's not going to cause a company like mine to go out and hire five more people. But it's going to put more money into our discretionary spending bucket, which allows us to buy more goods and services from other people, which is ultimately good for the economy."
linkThe thinking expressed in the NYT articles above (cut regulations and taxes) is what got the country into this mess. There are as many opinions as business owners out there (
Local execs assess Obama plan), but there is no denying that the package as a whole will create (construction, infrastruture and pulic service) jobs. Another false equivalency created by the NYT articles is that the payroll tax holiday is a hiring incentive. It's not. On the employer side, it's to help cash strapped small businesses. As CPBB President Robert Greenstein
points out, the tax break is capped at $5 million. On the employee side, the purpose is to stimulate individual spending.
Now, think about this point:
But the plan also includes incentives for companies to hire more workers, including a payroll tax cut for businesses and a $4,000 tax credit for those employers that hire people who have been out of work for six months or more.
Now, why exactly would an employer pass up the chance to hire a qualified unemployed person (there are plenty out there) to get a $4000 tax credit?
If theses business owners are hiring, why would they pass up that opportunity? Why? Because as the NYT article demonstrates some business owners still want the government to give them more incentives, lower their taxes and deregulate industries. Anyone still pushing those solutions is completely disinegenous or they didn't learn anything from the Bush years.
Also, the $4,000 is an incentive, not a directive to hire.
Economists: Obama’s plan would work (if it passes)American Jobs Act: A Significant Boost to GDP and Employment
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