- Harris has proposed expanding the small business tax deduction tenfold, from $5,000 to $50,000.
- Five businesswomen told BI that many small business owners are unaware of the plan.
- Congress would need to approve the plan, but experts told BI there is room for bipartisan support.
Ashley Storck, 26, founder of a digital marketing company in Madison, Wisconsin, is part of nearly a dozen professional organizations. Only one of them, he said, approached him to inform him about Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal for increase the small business tax deduction tenfold.
Storck considers herself very committed to Democratic politics: she was in the White House and introduced President Joe Biden at an event on student loan forgiveness — but he doubts many business owners in his critical battleground state know about Harris’ small business policies.
With the economy As the driving theme of this election, Harris has introduced a series of policies aimed at business owners, including his plan to expand the small business tax deduction from the current $5,000 to $50,000.. Under the proposed legislation, new entrepreneurs could take advantage of the $50,000 deduction immediately or a few years after launching, to help reduce taxes once they start making profits.
Rhett Buttle, co-CEO of the Small Business Roundtable and a former business adviser to Biden, previously told Business Insider that the expanded deduction would be particularly helpful for women and people of color who have a harder time accessing capital. But BI spoke to five women. businessmenall of whom said many people don’t even know the proposal exists.
Neither Hama Hinnawi, 46, nor Patricia Oswald, 55, had heard of Harris’ speech before speaking to BI. Owners of a fashion brand and a company that sells electric clotheslines respectively, both are members of the Women’s Business Development Center and doubt many of their peers know this. Hinnawi even said he called the company that handles his tax returns to see if any of them knew; They didn’t know it.
“There is no one place you can go to learn all this stuff about small business,” Hinnawi told BI. Oswald believes small business advocacy organizations and financial institutions that make loans should publicize the candidates’ proposals.
Anne Zimmerman, 71, co-founded one such organization, Small Business for America’s Future, in addition to her Ohio-based small business accounting firm. He said there isn’t enough news coverage about specific proposals for current and aspiring business owners who the proposal would help.
“You have to dig in and find it yourself,” he told BI of the legislative details. The business owners he advises are eager for policies that directly affect their operations, but Zimmerman said most don’t read beyond the headlines for the details.
Given his political involvement, Storck is confident that he would have eventually learned of Harris’ proposal. But she worries the same won’t be true for everyone else in her state and wants the campaigns to reach key community stakeholders, such as chambers of commerce.
“Especially in rural Wisconsin and with those small businesses that are not as politically engaged, it is 100% possible that they are not being sent this information or that they are not even aware that this is a policy that she is proposing,” Storck told BI . Harris is struggling with rural voters in Wisconsin and the other Blue Wall Battlefields of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
And in deep blue Chicago, Taylor McCleneghan, 36, had heard about Harris’ plans but overall doesn’t think there is enough educational outreach about tax rules for small business owners. McCleneghan, who owns a product development company, is a member of several small business advisory groups and considers herself relatively knowledgeable. Still, he struggles to understand the tangle of financial issues that entrepreneurs face.
“Facing the tax implications of starting a business when you don’t have family or friends who are entrepreneurs or you’re starting out completely self-funded with very little — that literacy is still a major hole,” he said.
McCleneghan is a lifelong Democrat, but has family members who are businessmen and support Trump. Everyone, he said, could benefit from knowing more about what politicians offer by way of support.
“I think everyone, regardless of their size or political leaning, has relied on government services to run their businesses,” he said.
Whether or not the target audience knows about Harris’ promise, it remains just that: a promise. If he wins the election, Congress would have to pass legislation to make his idea of expanding the tax deduction a reality. Despite the prevailing gridlock in Congress, four tax and small business experts BI previously spoke to said local entrepreneurship is a rare point of potential bipartisan agreement.
“I’m not a political economist, but I think it’s very difficult for a small, traditional conservative Republican to go back to their home district and say, ‘I voted against things that will help you open a business,'” Mary said. said Hansen, an economics professor at American University.