The election is officially over and that means a few things: No more commercials, no more flyers, but there is some change on the way. President Barack Obama won re-election of Republic Gov. Mitt Romney. A week after the election, Obama vowed that he would let the Bush-era tax rates expire on families with an income more than $250,000 per year. According to the presidents plan, he’s going to cut spending and make the wealthy pay a little more on their tax rolls.
Obviously, it’s not a popular choice among wealthy voters. They did, however, work for that money.
But according to one survey, small business owners say that plan can work. In fact, the poll for Small Business Majority found that 57 percent of small business owners said raising taxes on the top 2 percent of earners is preferred over rolling back spending on education, healthcare and infrastructure.
Of course, any poll can have some political backing behind it. The Hill reports that the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research firm, a Democratic polling firm, also found that most small business owners were and are aware of the fiscal cliff that’s been in the media as of recently, and understand the impact it could have on their business.
What’s the fiscal cliff? The short answer is it’s about $600 billion in spending cuts and tax increases that could impact small businesses substantially.
From Reuters: “The fiscal cliff is an across-the-board cut that will impact job creation and employment throughout the economy. Of course businesses that support federal contractors will feel the pain — but so will small businesses in the retail, travel and other sectors. Big corporations and small businesses alike will lower expectations for sales, investment and employment in the event of a jump off the fiscal cliff.”
According to MarketWatch, many small business owners not only understand what the fiscal cliff is, but they are also quite concerned about it.
“Many of the tax provisions set to expire benefit small businesses and the middle class, small businesses’ core customer base,” according to the report.
Other findings from the Greenberg poll, include:
- More than 75 percent of small business owners are worried about employees facing higher payroll taxes.
- 65 percent of entrepreneurs are concerned about spending cuts to occur for defense, infrastructure, Small Business Administration programs and government contracting. An even larger percentage of entrepreneurs are concerned about possible education cuts.
- Nine out of 10 small business owners agree that being self-employed individuals should be allowed to deduct health insurance costs.
- More than half of entrepreneurs support raising the capital gains tax rate to 20 percent maximum for the wealthiest 2 percent.
According to the poll, 47 percent of respondents said they were Republican or independent-leaning Republicans. 35 percent identified themselves as Democrat and 8 percent identified themselves as independent.
When it comes to education, small business owners are most concerned about cuts to state grants for career and technical education that provide students in high school, technical schools and community colleges with core academic and employability skills. In addition to those skills, they also work on employability and social skills that are specific to certain jobs.