Hillary Clinton is proposing a package of reforms and innovations to jumpstart small business startups, and strengthen small business growth.
The new proposals reflect what Clinton has heard since one of her first events of the campaign at an Iowa bike shop and across nearly 100 visits to small businesses since. Over a year ago, Hillary Clinton pledged that she would be the “small business president” if elected. Small businesses create around two-thirds of all new American jobs.
Clinton’s plans are aimed at making it easier to start, grow and sustain a small business in America. Her proposals will streamline the process of starting a small business; improve access to financing for small businesses; provide tax relief and simplification for small businesses; incentivize more health care benefits for small businesses and their employees; ensure the federal government is more responsive to small businesses; and, make it easier to fight back when small businesses get cheated.
Clinton and Senator Tim Kaine both grew up in small business-owning families. Clinton’s father ran a small drapery business in suburban Chicago where she grew up, and Kaine’s father ran a small ironworking business in Kansas City where he grew up. Kaine will discuss the new plan during a roundtable with small business owners this morning in Lakewood, Colorado, and Clinton will discuss it on a nationwide conference call with small business owners from all across the country this afternoon.
“Watching my father run a small business in Chicago, and working side by side with small business leaders throughout my career, I’ve seen firsthand how small business owners lift up their communities — but I’ve also seen the daily struggles they face. This is why I am putting forward a plan that will make it easier for people to create a business and for existing business owners to grow and hire,” said Hillary Clinton. “Whether it’s our efforts to streamline regulation and cut red tape so existing small businesses can hire more or our plans for new tax incentives that help new small businesses get off the ground, this plan is a comprehensive look at what small businesses need to succeed. It’s clear that small businesses are the engine of our economy and strengthening them is key to making an economy that works for every American, not just those at the top.”
Clinton’s new plan would:
- Streamline the process of starting a small business. It takes longer to start a business in the U.S. than it does in other countries like Canada or Denmark — often because of unnecessary red tape and licensing requirements at the state and local level. Hillary Clinton will offer state and local governments a deal – new federal incentives if they streamline unnecessary licensing and make it less costly to start a small business.
- Improve access to financing for small businesses. Small business loans comprised just 29 percent of total bank loans in 2012, as compared with 51 percent in 1995. Clinton will work to boost small business lending by streamlining regulation and cutting red tape for community banks and credit unions, which are the backbone of small business lending in America — while also defending the new rules on Wall Street. Clinton’s plan also would allow entrepreneurs to defer student loan payments with no interest while they get their ventures off the ground.
- Provide new tax relief and simplification for small businesses. Hillary will create a new standard deduction for small businesses—like the one available to individual filers—so they get tax relief without filing as many forms documenting their overhead costs, potentially including transportation, computer and phone use, maintaining an office and more. She will simplify the rules so small businesses can track and file their taxes as easily as filling out a checkbook or printing a bank statement. And the new plan would quadruple the start-up tax deduction to significantly lower the cost of starting a business.
- Incentivize health care benefits for small businesses and their employees. Clinton would simplify and expand the healthcare tax credit for small employers in the Affordable Care Act, so that even more employers can provide quality, affordable healthcare to their workers. She will make sure that small businesses with up to 50 employees can be eligible for the credit, and she will simplify complex phase-out and eligibility rules so that it’s easier for many more small businesses to get the credit and cover their workers.
- Ensure the federal government is more responsive to small businesses. Clinton will push the federal agencies to make government more user friendly and treat small businesses like the customer, including by guaranteeing a 24-hour response time to small business with questions about federal regulations and access to capital programs.
- Make it easier to fight back when small businesses get cheated. Clinton will stop large companies from using expensive litigation hurdles to deny small businesses their right to a remedy when they’re denied payment for services—and give small businesses recourse to take on predatory behavior.
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AFP
