Opponents of President Obama's tax increases like to talk about "the small-business owner" as one of the people that will be hurt by this higher tax burden. Defenders of Obama strike back that because the plan will only raise taxes on those with incomes over $250,000, only a small minority of small-business owners will be affected by the tax increases. For example, Karen Klein recently explained in Business Week that data from the Tax Policy Center show that only 8.9 percent of people reporting small-business income have household income over $250,000.
But the debate continues. An article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal yesterday describes that of those 8.9 percent business owners, many of them run the most productive businesses, as well as the businesses that hire the most people:
The Obama administration has argued that the vast majority of small-business owners wouldn't face tax increases, because most entrepreneurs simply don't earn the $200,000 to $250,000 a year that would qualify them for the higher levies. Nor are their companies big enough, the thinking goes, to affect broad swaths of workers.
But Dianna Russo, a local certified public accountant and managing principal of accounting firm Houldsworth, Russo & Co., said her experiences show otherwise.
"Most people think of small business as someone working out of their home making $100,000 a year and taking expenses," Russo said. "But I'm a small business, and I employ 17 people."
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