The Truth About Obama's Tax Plan and Small Businesses

Simple Fact: Barack Obama will raise YOUR taxes.

With over one trillion dollars in proposed spending, the money has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is you and me. The liberal agenda has always been in favor of higher taxes, more government spending, and a bigger more controlling government. Barack Obama is lying to the American electorate, and (according to media polls) half the country believes him. This coming after Obama has verbally supported increasing the corporate tax, capital gains tax, social security tax, death tax, and personal income tax. Obama's record proves this to be true. Change is exactly what we will have in an Obama presidency. However, in these hard economic times, we need our money to stay in our pockets. Not the governments.

Remember that magical number, $250,000?? Obama bases his entire tax plan on that number. For many people in this country (depending on where you live), $250,000 is not a lot of money...personal income or small business wise.

Here is a transcript from a local radio station breaking down the Obama tax plan and its effect on small businesses. I have also provided some links for further research and accountability.

Those of you out there, forget what party affiliation that you have. Forget your ideological orientation. Those of you who own small businesses and those of you who work at small businesses, I want to speak to you directly and in a pure business fashion right to your heart, here. Obviously throw some politics in because lies are being told by the Obama campaign through and through, not corrected by the Drive-Bys, about small business. That figure of $250,000 is key. It is everywhere Obama speaks. It's used all the time when he talks about tax policy. Well, what is a small business in America today? Obama says that most small businesses do not earn over $250,000 a year. That is clearly a lie.

It is impossible. It cannot be true. Your own instinct tells you that. You in small business know full well it can't be true. Now, the employees of a small business might believe it. Most employees don't get to see the books. But if you're an employee of small business, and there are five or six other employees in your small business (and that's a small business) just add up your combined salaries and find out if your small business has enough to pay them. If you're making $50,000 a year at a small business and there are five of you, that's $250,000 right there. If there are three of you and one's making 30, one's making 70, one's making 60, you can see how just the number of employees will get you close to what Obama says is the top of most small businesses.

That $250,000 is key because he wants all of you who don't make that amount of money to think you're not going to get a tax increase. Now, remember, Obama has this new coalition of voters, the 30% to 35% who pay no income tax in this country. Not only do they not pay income tax, they want you to pay more. They have seen the benefits of no income taxes. They've been told they're the backbone of America. They've been told they're getting shafted. They've been told the rich are getting all the tax cuts. They have been told that all that wealth and prosperity out there is being denied them by the rich. They pay no taxes, no income taxes. Federal income taxes. So they're thinking they've been screwed, that they've been shafted. Obama's playing to them, and he's telling them, "Because you've been shafted for so many years by Bush and so many years by Reagan, we're going to get even with the people who shafted you."

That's that magical figure of $250,000, and he's using it in a way that is an out-and-out lie. They have been saying that most small businesses do not earn over $250,000 a year, but the Small Business Administration has a different view. I have a post here from October 7th of this year from Patterico's Pontifications, and it's entitled, "Obama's Tax Plan and Small Business." The genesis for Patterico putting this all together was Obama at the town hall presidential debate saying this about his tax policies, and it's according to a CNN transcript. Quote: "Only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year. So the vast majority of small businesses would get a tax cut under my plan." Now, "The US Small Business Administration (SBA) defines a 'small business' according to its average annual receipts or the number of its employees."

I know numbers are hard to follow, but this will not be. I want you to keep sharp in your head the number $250,000, because that's the operative number that Obama uses. Remember Obama: "Only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year. So the vast majority of small businesses would get a tax cut under my plan." Okay. Here. Let's look at the maximum average annual receipts by industry that a business can have and still be classified as small business by the SBA. "Crop production of all types: $750,000." Keep that $250,000 figure in mind because every business that I'm going to list here, every small business is far larger than $250,000 in receipts. Yet Obama says most small businesses do not make over $250,000. "Crop production of all types: $750,000. Animal production except for cattle & chicken/eggs: $750,000. Cattle feedlots: $2.5M. Chicken/egg production: $12.5M."

These are small businesses, according to the SBA. "Forestry & logging: $7M. Fishing: $4M." Did you know that forestry and logging has as many operators that are small businesses? It's a $7 million definition of a small business by the SBA. "Fishing: $4M. Irrigation, sewage, water supplies: $7M." These are various areas. The size of your business -- for example, if you're in housing construction and you're a business is under $33.5 million, you're considered a small business by the SBA. Now, keep in mind, Obama says the vast majority of small businesses don't earn more than $250,000. Let me keep going. "Heavy and civil engineering construction: $33.5M. Dredging and cleanup: $20M. Concrete, framing, and other housing contractors: $14M. Car dealers: $23-29M."

Do you know some car dealers are small businesses? Those of you who work at them do. If you own a dealership or series of dealerships valued in your receipts (these are annual receipts) between $23 and $29 million, you're a small business. "RV, motorcycle, & boat dealers: $7M. Furniture, hardware, clothing & sporting good stores," if your receipts are under $7 million a year, you're considered a small business. "Electronic stores..." They're not talking the Circuit Citys, the Best Buys and all this. If you're a mom and pop electronics store, $7 million is the cutoff line for you to be called a small business. "Supermarkets, gas stations & department stores: $27M." Anything over that, and you're not a small business; anything under it, you are. "Pharmacies: $7M."

Now, keep in mind, 250 grand. Obama in the presidential town hall debate said, "Only a few percent of small businesses make more than $250,000 a year. So the vast majority of small businesses would get a tax cut under my plan." The truth is that if he's going to implement a plan that people over 250 grand personally or small business, Subchapter S filing under a personal return, if he's going to have a tax increase on anybody more than 250 grand, 99% of small business is going to get a huge tax increase! The very little guy that Obama claims to want to help is the very guy that's going to get clipped here, because once these taxes go up the first instinct of the small businessman or woman is to survive as a small business.

If your taxes go up and you have an economy like this and you cannot grow for a little while because people don't have a whole lot of disposable income because their taxes are going up, too, what are you going to do? You can't keep paying people if your business is going down. Your job is to have your business survive because you have to go through the up and down cycles. You're going to have to lay people off. The business cannot purposely lose money for humanitarian reasons, for a very long time. If it does, it will go out of business and nobody will get anything from it. I listed for you -- one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14 -- 17 categories of small business. Not one of them would qualify for a tax cut under Obama's plan. There are probably some small businesses that are under $250,000, but they are so tiny.

They are so small. They might be sole proprietorships. There are a whole lot more examples at the link. Most of the industries in the table, such as manufacturers of food, beverages, apparel, print, oil, gas, plastics, plumbing, machinery, computers, on and on and on are considered small businesses based on their total number of employees instead of average annual receipts. Now, in those industries, the cutoff between small and large businesses range from 500 to 1,000 employees per business or industry. Now, I'm going to tell you what. If you have a small business with anywhere between 500 and a thousand employees, I will guaran-damn-tee you your annual receipts are higher than $250,000 --and you, too, are going to get Obama's took us increase.

It is going to be a personal income tax rate increase, for those of you that file on your personal form, Subchapter S, on your personal return. You're going to get your own marginal tax rates go up. You're going to have to a capital gains tax increase. And it's likely that at some point down the road Obama will shore up and raise corporate taxes, in the midst of an economy that all the time all the so-called experts say is going to take a while for it to rebound here. Now the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up almost 600 points now. It's at 581. We're over 9,000 at 9,032, and of course it's (clapping) but why? Because the feds and everybody else has taken over all these banks! So the supposed free marketers on the Street here are getting all happy about socialism and nationalization.

Don't forget, in the midst of all this, we've got Pelosi and Reid and Hoyer planning a special session after Obama wins to start this process of tax increases going to eliminate their lifting of the ban of weeks ago on offshore drilling. They think they've got this in the bag. Obama is running around using this $250,000 figure for every tax increase he's planning because he figures 99% of the people in this country are employees, and they will also believe that their business will not get a tax increase because, "Obama is smart. Obama is suave! Obama is smooth. Why, it's so nice to have finally a smart guy that will be leading and speaking for America." He's lying through his teeth. Now, forget politics here, folks. We're talking about it as if this ever happens, if this actually happens, with 95% or more of all small businesses and the corporate tax, too, going up, we're talking about your standard of living.

We're talking about your quality of life. We're talking about your ability to save. I don't care whether you buy stock or you've decided to put the money in the mattress, you're going to have less of it, and eventually the oil price is going to rebound and go up. It's going to happen. There's something awfully suspicious about that dropping from 130 to 80 bucks two weeks or three before an election. But it's what it is, and of course everybody's putting out this news, "Largest single drop in the gasoline price in history!" It's thirty cents, from 3.80 to 3.30, average across the United States. Now, I have even more on this small business stuff. These numbers get even harder to translate on radio, but it is from the Census Bureau, and it's the receipt size of firms. It's the latest, most recent data we have for this are 2002, receipt size of employer firms.

It illustrates here quite readily that the... Just take this, the 100 to $499,000 figure that I mentioned earlier, there are 2,387,780 firms, there are two million establishments, there is about 8.8 million workers. The annual payroll total is... Well, forget those numbers. If you look at this breakdown and you add up all the firms and all the revenue and all the employment, there is no way that the vast majority of small businesses have only receipts of $250,000 a year! There are a total of 5,697,759 firms (we're discussing here small business), 1.2 million of them have less than a hundred thousand dollars in receipts which makes them sole proprietorships; 2.3, almost 2.4 million are between 100 and $500,000. And then as you go higher, the numbers decrease. But when you add them all up, you find that... No matter how you look at it, is the point -- whether you look at it as number of employees, whether you look at it as receipts -- there's no way Obama's even close to the truth on this.

Patterico: Obama's Tax Plan and Small Businesses
Statistics about Business Size (including Small Business) from the U.S. Census Bureau
MSNBC: MORE $42,000
Wall Street Journal: Obama's 95% Illusion