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Encouraging Self-Employment Should Be a Focal Point of the New Small Business Administrator
Read this article in PDF form here.
By Katie Vlietstra
The Small Business Administration (SBA) is our nation’s direct link between the administration and America’s small business community. The agency provides benefits such as advocacy and support, loans, and access to capital and entrepreneurial development to ensure the small business community continues to move our economy forward.
As Maria Contreras-Sweet moves into her role as SBA Administrator, the NASE challenges her to engage and proactively work towards encouraging more Americans to seek the path of self-employment. By doing so we hope she works to remove some of the challenging barriers that prevent many Americans from realizing the dream of self-employment!
Affordable Care Act Implementation: To better serve America’s small businesses, Congress and the Administration should not only eliminate the individual mandate penalty for this year and extend open enrollment through the end of 2014, but also calculate the individual or family subsidy based on the previous year’s adjusted gross income (AGI) rather than an anticipated calculation. This will provide a more accurate and fair subsidy estimate where participants won’t be required to reimburse the government if their earnings change throughout the year. Tax Reform: Obstacles such as the individual health care exchange penalty and self-employment tax prevents the creation of new small businesses, as well as growth and expansion of existing ones. Lowering the individual tax rate and offering a permanent self-employment health care deduction will help small businesses compete and stabilize our bottom lines. Access to Capital: Contreras-Sweet’s business and banking background makes her the right advocate to identify these new and innovative ways to securing revenue and capital lines for America’s smallest businesses. All of these help the country’s overall economy by fueling job creation in America. Each and every day the NASE has the privilege to work for and support 23 million Americans who are operating their own business; it is a magical thing to see someone succeed in achieving their goal of self-employment. At the end of the day, these amazing people are creating an economic path not just for them, but their families and their communities — creating something that will last generations and have positive impact on those around them. We know firsthand that the path to self-employment is not easy nor is it absent of significant financial peril for some. Yet more people than ever are choosing self-employment. It is that hard work and success that we all strive for in our daily lives.
The NASE looks forward to working with Administrator Contreras-Sweet and her team on throwing open the doors of self-employment, eliminating the financial and bureaucratic barriers and above all helping people achieve the American dream, because it is something that we take personal pride in each day.