SurePayroll surveyed small business owners to find out their reaction to President Obama's announcement last week regarding government action to provide cash to small business owners. Here is a summary of Obama's plans from Reuters:
Some key findings:
Small business owners' response? Basically, it is to cut out the middle man. Rather than over-tax entrepreneurs in the first place and then create a government program to loan or invest tax money back to the entrepreneur, why not just cut taxes? The majority of respondents believe tax cuts would do more to stimulate the economy and help save their businesses faster.Under one program, the government would provide low-cost capital to the banks, contingent on the banks submitting a plan on how the capital will allow them to increase lending to small businesses.
The other program would increase the maximum Small Business Administration loan size to $5 million from $2 million and would provide partial guarantees on the loans.
Some key findings:
- More than 50% of respondents think the Obama initiative will not work
- 60% of respondents believe it will take over 8 months to have any effect, though they need cash now.
- 67% of people believe that small business tax cuts would do more to stimulate the economy (and in a shorter time frame)
- Only 21% of small business owners think the Obama plan will have a positive effect on their business. Almost 60% think it will have no effect on them, with the rest of respondents answering that they didn't know what effect the new initiatives would have on their small businesses.
Do you have a link to the Obama initiative? Would be helpful within context of this post :)
I added a link to the most recent story from Reuters about the plan which does include some summary information. Thanks for the suggestion.
This perpetuates a common problem - debt.
Why would a program that would help 21% of small businesses be bad? The other 60% may not need a small business loan. This plan is to spurn new small business growth. By creating new businesses, you create more jobs and in turn the GDP will rebound. Give small businesses a tax break and most will sit on the money until the recession turns around. Do you really feel that a tax cut will create job growth? This is what the Obama plan is trying to accomplish.
Jeff I would like you to ask yourself when seeing this catch all reply...
Can our congress really pass small business tax cuts without them being a guise for the ultra wealthy cuts and large gains tax breaks like the ones that drained our stock markets of cash flow for the last 6 years as have consistently seen in the past?
Another point... If a business currently only requires loans of just 2KK in working capital (and that is a generous number the full loan; assuming most of the [SBA etc.] loans are for land, buildings, and machinery) do you not think the owners will clearly benefit from the new administrations tax cuts they will already witness under the planned Obama cuts? Now if they are in the top bracket that will actually lose its Bush tax cut bonuses are these really the small businesses struggling that had to fire the secretary at $10/hr over the last 6 months? No they aren't.
Small business are just that. Small. They are hard working people that are trying to make ends meet without proper lending from giant banks(and rightly so)as this economy is a mess. The money went to the wrong places and until that is corrected we are in for a long long ride.