Outside Voices: Small Business

What the Stimulus Package Means for Small Business

By Steve King

Posted: May 19, 2009

Steve King

Steve King

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus package, was signed into law by President Obama in February. It amounts to $787 billion in government spending, incentives, and tax cuts designed to kick-start the economy and create or save 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next two years.

There has been much debate about the merits of the stimulus package, especially as it relates to small business. But regardless of how you feel about the stimulus package, it is starting to create opportunities for small businesses.

For example, there are more than 2,600 road projects funded by the stimulus package currently underway across the United States. The vast majority of this work is being done by small and midsize construction companies. Additional opportunities are being created in healthcare, education, energy, clean tech, and other areas of the economy.

We recently did an industry-by-industry employment impact analysis of the stimulus package. Based on this analysis, we estimate that the stimulus package will create or save roughly 1.6 million small-business jobs.

Our analysis is included in the free E-book The Stimulus Package: What's in it for Growing Businesses? This E-book was produced by MyVenturepad in cooperation with SCORE and sponsored by SAP. It is designed to help small businesses take advantage of the opportunities created by the stimulus package.

The E-book also contains an analysis of the tax implications of the stimulus package by small-business and tax expert Barbara Weltman. And Entreworks Consulting founder Erik Pages, a specialist on the Small Business Administration, provides an assessment of what the package means to the SBA.

Steve King is a partner at Emergent Research , where he leads a research project to identify, analyze, and forecast the global trends and shifts affecting small business. He blogs at www.smallbizlabs.com.

bailout my back end

all this talk about obama's bailing out small busniess isn't happing and shoot i own a small varitey gift shop that has been in business since june of 2006 and thang where going ok up until 2009 and iam now behind on everything and these bank that got this money and are supposto be lending to small business owner are saying no everytime , even the small town bank that i have used for 5 years and even my own personal bank won't help .

is there a smiply way to get the money i need , shoot at this time i only need 7,000.00 and that's just to get caught up on bills

anyone of anything other than long SBA stuff if i had the %to pay i wouldn't need money

tina hodges of GA @ Jan 28, 2010 11:29:20 AM

impossible

400,000 for each american taxpayer? what? there are about 300 million people in the u.s. you do the math

jack of IL @ Oct 17, 2009 17:25:44 PM

Ga stimulus money.

I am a small landscape company in atlanta, that does 90% yard renovations. In the past 2 weeks I have had 4 different customers fail to proceed on there project at this time for one reason or another. July is usually the best time for new sod (hot weather sod) to get a jump start and take hold of the soil. However, after 13 years of relative success in the business I am close to closing my doors. The fact is that Georgia received 52 million of stimulus money a few months ago and you can be rest assurred that the same large contractors that have supported the polititions in washington in the past are the omes that are paving the roads and building the bridges here in Georgia.

Ok, I have read that homeowners can receive a tax credit for installation of some energy efficient product in there homes. What about the other small contractors out there? what do we have to offer to receive a stimulus package? I install GREEN sod, does that qualify for something?

Really this package needs to be stopped now since only 10% has been let and re- distribute the balance to the little guy somehow. It makes more sense to have the small businees's hire immediate help for immediate results within our small business world.

The best I heard of so far is this. Someone calculated that if your take the $700 billion and divide it up among the taxpayers in Americia we should all receive around $400,000 each. What would you do with $400,000 dollars. Pay off my Mortgage and all my college loans and all my bills and put money in the bank and save it for a rainy day. That way we wouldn't have had to bail out all the banks and still have money left over. It's so simple but since we are all not polititions with our hands out it will never happen.

But it sure sounds good doesn't it?

Phil Polak of GA @ Jul 13, 2009 19:00:59 PM

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Outside Voices: Small Business

Outside Voices: Small Business

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