The GOP's argument that eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the rich (those earning over $250,000 a year) would hurt small businesses could very well be a myth. $250,000 a year is only related to PERSONAL income and is never mentioned when compared to GROSS earnings.
Small businesses owners, in any given year, minus improvements and expansions and itemized costs such as inventory, store rent, payroll, and taxes...would only be taxed higher on anything they earned ABOVE $250,000 (not including ROTH IRAs, etc) as their personal salary.
Individuals calling themselves lobbyists, consultants, CPAs, or "independent contractors" - and working for large corporations - could also incorporate themselves as a small business or LLC (Limited liability company). But they would also be taxed based on their personal income.
The average small business owner has a salary of $233,600 a year. How many small businesses owners earn that? A mom and pop video store - in which both husband and wife or two unrelated partners - could each draw $250k as their own annual salary and would NOT be in the same tax bracket as the ultra-rich such as Bill Gates, the executives of Goldman Sachs, or the CEOs of corporations such as Exxon-Mobile...those who never have to worry about food or rent for themselves or their families.
Couldn't this all just be a GOP scare tactic? The rich already have plenty of money on the sidelines right now and haven't been creating very many new jobs in the last 2 years...except for maybe in China. There's even fast food operators working in India taking orders for drive-through windows in America! (I heard that on the History Channel.)
Could this be why stocks on the New York Stock exchange for American companies always do so well, and go UP, whenever there's good economic data coming out of China? - even though millions of people are still unemployed in the United States. What might that indicate? Hmm?
American-based multi-national corporations would out-source their own mothers if they could get away with it - for them, it's all about making more profits and evading more taxes...it never once crossed their minds that they might owe American workers anything. They just want you to buy their products with someone else's "living-wages".
If the salaries of the ultra-rich were taxed more, what would they do, move all their factories to China? I-pods are already made in China! Maybe all those CEOs should also become Chinese citizens too, since they don't seem to give a damn for the ones of this one.
You've all seen the reports of the ever-growing disparity between the wages of CEOs and the lowly workers since the 1970's. The CEO of Wal-Mart makes more in one hour than his workers make all year! What do his employees earn as part-time workers and what kind of benefits do they have? How good is their health or dental care? How many of them own stocks or pay capital gains taxes? How many have to pay a commission to their brokers or hedge fund managers? (Almost everyone in the Senate does.)
And most economists agree: It just doesn't make sense to give each of the 120,000 wealthiest Americans what amounts to, on average, a $3 million tax break over the next decade.
If you agree, please sign the petition:
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/activities/390?t=leahy
Small Businesses Defined:
A tax attorney can explain to you much better than I. Small businesses would do just fine if the mega-wealthy were taxed more, but they probably wouldn't want that limitation imposed upon them either...JUST IN CASE THEY EXCEEDED $250,000 a year for a personal income and one day ended up becoming another BIG BUSINESS too. A small business generally has under 50 employees. In the U.S. there were:
Firms with 1 to 4 employees 2,777,680
Firms with 5 to 9 employees 1,043,448
Firms with 10 to 19 employees 632,682
Firms with 20 to 99 employees 526,355
Firms with 100 to 499 employees 86,538
Firms with 500 employees or more 17,047
SOURCE:
http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/smallbus.html
* A small business is an concern that is organized for profit, with a place of business in the United States, and which operates primarily within the United States or makes a significant contribution to the U.S. economy through payment of taxes or use of American products, materials or labor. Further, the concern cannot be dominant in its field, on a national basis. Finally, the concern must meet the numerical small business size standard for its industry. SBA has established a size standard for most industries in the U.S. economy. The most common size standards (about 3/4 of all small businesses) are as follow:
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