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Mike Zaffaroni calls the newest piece of equipment at his landscaping company in Jacksonville, Florida, his “Tax Cut Truck.” He had long wanted to expand the services he offers to his customers and says the tax cuts President Donald J. Trump signed into law six months ago were the motivation he needed to buy the $80,000 truck and forklift. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, most small businesses will now be able to deduct 20 percent off their business income in addition to having their taxable income taxed at lower rates. And for the first five years, they’ll be...

A labor shortage issue is increasingly weighing on small businesses around the country. This comes despite record-high confidence on Main Street. In May, one-third of small-business owners reported job openings they could not fill, and 12 percent reported using temporary workers. Mike Fredrich shows off unmanned presses in his Manitowoc, Wisconsin, company. They're ready to start production at MCM Composites, a 55-person enterprise that makes custom thermoset molding. The only problem? Fredrich has no one to operate them. "These tools are heated to 300 degrees," he said. "But we're not running them. Had we had the people for the first...

The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and was designed to safeguard the banking system, appears to have made it more difficult for small businesses and entrepreneurs to obtain funding. In The Impact of the Dodd-Frank Act on Small Business (NBER Working Paper No. 24501), Michael D. Bordo and John V. Duca find that the 2010 legislation reduced the incentives for all banks to make small loans. It also raised the benefits of scale in the banking business, tilting the playing field away from small banks which...

Small-business confidence is surging in 2018 as optimism rises among small-business owners about the newly enacted tax-reform package, according to the latest CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey, released Tuesday. The CNBC/SurveyMonkey Q1 Small Business Confidence Index saw an increase of five points, from 57 to 62, a record high and the largest quarter-to-quarter move the index has seen since CNBC and SurveyMonkey began measuring last year. This is the first survey since President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law on December 22, 2017. In the Q4 survey, small-business owners were split evenly on the core question...

Wealthy exodus to escape new tax rules worries California Democrats By Adam Ashton aashton@sacbee.com January 18, 2018 12:33 PM Updated 10 hours 36 minutes ago The Republican-backed federal tax bill flipped the tables on a never-ending question for California politicians: Will high taxes lead the state’s wealthiest residents to flee the Golden State for the comparable tax havens of Florida, Nevada and Texas? Republicans reliably raise that alarm when Democrats advocate for tax increases, like the 2012 and 2016 ballot initiatives that levied a new income tax on very high-earning residents. But now, with the federal tax bill cutting off...

Store owner Kamal Saleh was just hit with thousands of dollars in fines. His crime? He sold three cigars for $8.89. "Too cheap!" say New York City bureaucrats. "The cigars should have cost 11 cents more." Politicians want you to spend more for tobacco. They decided this after anti-smoking crusader Dr. Kurt Ribisl told the Centers for Disease Control, "Higher prices will deter children from smoking." A pit of socialist micromanagers called the New York City Council quickly embraced the idea. "It's also being considered very seriously in a number of jurisdictions in California," Ribisl told me. When health totalitarians...

Several veterans are finding personal and financial fulfillment as small business owners offering quality products. Christmas is the perfect time to shop with them.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has caused a bit of a hullabaloo by complaining that small businesses don't get the benefits that corporations do in the GOP tax plan. Johnson has credibility here because he is one of those rare breeds in Congress who actually knows something about running a business, having done so for nearly 30 years. Sen. Johnson's beef with the House plan is that the effective tax rate on a successful small business would be almost 36 percent (as opposed to 39.6 percent today), compared with the new 20 percent rate for a corporation, such as General Electric...

My father built a small business from scratch with years of sweat equity and many weeks and months away from home. He employed about 100 people, and by the end of his working years, the business was highly successful. He became a millionaire. He lived the American dream. He sold a product that people wanted, provided a solid income for many families and gave lots of money to our church and numerous other charities. And every year he paid his taxes. Over the course of his lifetime, he paid millions of dollars in income taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, property...

Only half of America’s smallest businesses now offer health coverage to their workers because many say steady cost hikes have made it too expensive to afford a benefit that nearly all large employers still provide. The Kaiser Family Foundation said Tuesday that 50 percent of companies with three to 49 employees offered coverage this year. That’s down from 59 percent in 2012 and 66 percent more than a decade ago. “There’s just not as much money around for compensation, including benefits,” said Gary Claxton, a Kaiser vice president and lead author of the nonprofit health policy organization’s annual health benefits...

As the nation gears up for another major storm bearing down on Florida, and continues to assess the damage from Harvey, small businesses are helping lead the city’s recovery – providing not only helping hands in the rebuilding effort, but a precious sense of normality. HOUSTON AND DANEVANG, TEXAS Even for a farmer, there is such a thing as too much water. Sweat dripping from under his red, white, and blue cowboy hat, Guy Mouelet is standing in his farm at the corner of Fondren Road and Willowbend Boulevard here, taking a break between giant hacks with his shovel at...

<p>The unmarked vehicles arrived in the morning. More than 20 armed agents poured out.</p> <p>Hours later, Mii’s Bridal & Tuxedo was out of business after serving customers for decades. Its entire inventory of wedding gowns and dresses as well as sewing machines and other equipment were sold at auction.</p>

The CEO: Logan Rae, 22, co-founder (with Kim Hruda) of Bacon Boxes School: Class of 2017 at Florida Atlantic University From: Miami, Florida Based in: Boca Raton, Florida Number of employees: 2-3 part time; with seasonal delivery drivers it goes up to 5. Sleep: 4-7 hours a night Our a-ha moment The idea came in early 2015. I had made a bacon bouquet for a friend that I delivered to a busy office. All the women went crazy over it. I had a final right after, but I took on the project on my own. It was insane. So when...

Here is a proposal for a new reality show that could not only help President Trump do his job, but could help millions of other Americans gain or keep theirs. I'll tell you how in a minute. But first, some background: For a small-business entrepreneur to be successful, he or she must not only come up with an idea and execute it, but then navigate the paperwork and bureaucratic processes involved in getting a business off the ground. It's not enough to make and sell your product and service. You also have to acquire business licenses, open bank accounts,...

For the first 17 years, RBK Health Care Marketing in Milwaukee grew at a respectable pace, reaching more than $3 million a year in revenue in 2016. This year, founder Carl Brown says the firm will grow by 50 percent to 60 percent and hit $4 million to $5 million in revenue. He expects to add two more employees, giving the firm a total of about 18. One of the factors behind its growth spurt: Brown participated in a six-month program called Scale Up Milwaukee, part of a larger movement to encourage established entrepreneurs in second-tier cities — and it's...

Ivanka Trump has been involved in discussions with the World Bank about establishing a funding operation that would support female entrepreneurs, bank and administration officials said Wednesday. The officials stressed that nothing has been set up yet and that talks are ongoing about how this would be set up. They said it could be structured as a World Bank-run "facility," which accepts contributions from governments and private donors and then provides funding and support to women in developing countries. According to a senior administration official, Trump recently pitched the idea to World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, who then...

In today’s hyper-partisan era, one goal crosses the political divide: the need for more entrepreneurs. Encomia are everywhere: Politicians praise them, Hollywood lionizes them, venture capitalists chase them, universities foster them. Entrepreneurs, from Henry Ford to Elon Musk, are embedded in American lore. In an earlier era they were popularized in Horatio Alger rags-to-riches terms; today it’s the garage-to-tech-titan stories that have legendary status for Millennials. Could it be, however, that we’ve hit peak preoccupation with entrepreneurship? Although entrepreneurial magic is often discussed in “tech” terms, the reality is most startups involve such things as restaurants and lawn services or...

Cisco executive chairman and tech investor John Chambers believes the Trump administration and Congress will make startups great again by loosening regulations and making it easier for more companies to go public. "You've got to really enable the next generation of start-ups," Chambers told CNBC's Josh Lipton. "It starts with regulation, in terms of making it easier for companies to do this," said Chambers. "It comes with, really, making America great in the startup community again." Start-ups will be pivotal to America's future economic growth, said Chambers. Though 90 companies that went public on the Nasdaq last year, he stressed...

Ivanka Trump has expanded her research on economic policy with a visit to a Baltimore center for minority-owned small businesses. A White House official confirmed the Wednesday visit to the Raymond V. Haysbert Center for Entrepreneurship at the Greater Baltimore Urban League. The official said Trump participated in a round table discussion with business owners....

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a rare display of bipartisanship, the Senate on Tuesday confirmed former wrestling entertainment executive Linda McMahon to lead the Small Business Administration as part of President Donald Trump's cabinet. The Senate voted 81-19 to confirm McMahon, who helped start and grow World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McMahon will "prioritize growing jobs over growing government bureaucracy."(continued)