If Small Businesses Are Economic Engines Of The US ... What Changes Are Needed To Re-ignite The Passion Of Innovation And Entrepreneurship?

Small business needs to be freed of excessive and punitive taxation and regulation. If you have an environment hostile to business, then there is no incentive to seek success.

If small businesses are successful, the economy benefits, America enjoys higher rates of employment, better conditions for workers and a better market for the consumer. But government has got to free it's grip first.

Most small businesses are taxed as individuals. In every case if you want to drive hypergrowth of our economy you ought to be considering a change from income taxation which punishes productive behavior to end use only consumption taxation, which taxes people only on the amount they choose to consume from our economy. The whooshing sound you would hear would be investment dollars and seed money pouring into the US to fund productive businesses that can now compete on price due to the removal of all or part of the embedded taxation inherent in the price of goods and services in an economy where income and/or value added activity is taxed.

The passion for entrepreneurship and innovation burn brightly, as always. Government just needs to get out of the way.

Small businesses pay ten times more proportionally than do large corporations to comply with regulations and tax codes, according to my friend Charles Wilson, a risk management consultant. If compliance costs a big company 1% of revenues, it costs us 10%. And that’s just doing the paperwork, not paying the taxes, fees, and premiums.

The time and money it takes a small business to deal with taxes (fed, state, payroll, local), insurance (health, liability, workers comp), employment compliance, etc. adds up to a sizable proportion of our annual hours. Every hour we’re answering a query from the IRS or the payroll tax people is an hour we’re not being productive, generating profits, creating jobs, providing products and services wanted by our clients.

All these government agencies pay lip service to the importance of small business as the engine of job creation and innovation in our economy, but their policies toward small business say just the opposite.

The cost: tax revenue lost on the profits we don’t earn, and payroll taxes on the jobs we don’t create. Multiply this by millions of small businesses, and I bet it’s a double-digit hit to the nation’s productivity.

While discussing the challenges of small business ownership with a friend and advisor, he equated the challenge of limited access to capital with starting a fire. He said, "To start a fire, you need two things: A spark and some wood. Unfortunately, in today's world, the higher value perception is placed on providing the wood."

The passion of U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship is not dead. It never even dimmed, despite the current economy. The challenges facing entrepreneurs are more centered in limited education, access to relationships and the costs of customer acquisition than in a downward facing economy.

While passion and innovation may fuel a business, they are rarely sufficient to grow and sustain a business. Experience, capability, quality products and services and the ability to compete - and to win - are essential to business success.

Sure, favorable tax policies would certainly help but they would also dramatically increase the number of competitor companies. What's needed are policies that do not punish the small business owner for being small and provide for a "period of sustainment" during which the small business owner is freed from excessive capital gains or other taxes that result from successful execution of business fundamentals.

I also think that we, as entrepreneurs, need to learn some lessons from our big business counterparts:

1. We need to band together and partner more often.

2. We need to seek out alternative means of financing, including bartering of products and services. Starting off with or acquiring huge debt means having to make a lot more money before you can turn a profit.

3. We need to work more closely with local Chambers of Commerce, elected officials and the media to bring more attention to small business issues.

4. We need to arrive at the discussion with real and achievable solutions that are applicable to a broad range of business types. After all, we don't want to necessarily remain small forever.

5. Finally, we have to learn when it is appropriate to set passion aside and apply old-fashioned common sense to the situation. One of the hardest things for a passionate business owner to do is to accept when we're in over our head, close up shop and try again.

Will Small Business Lead The United States Out Of This Recession?

Non-profit visionaries and small business know the course that must be taken and they are taking it.

These "Action People" are not in our government. They are more practical than that. They are the communicators, the true venture capitalists setting up worldwide non-profit foundations (Gates and Buffet for example). They are like the Bill Moyers, perpetually exposing waste fraud and abuse and then going one step further to fix it from the inside. They are the young inspirational members of the small business base in this country that will be tasked with picking up the pieces and re-inventing the future so our government can follow along.

We'll see every form of unique small business inventiveness imaginable - efficiently created, using technology to the max, and not seeking financing to the hilt - only the opportunity to succeed.

Small business has been the historical driver in recovery from recessions. This recession should be no different ..... except the support normally afforded these small business endeavors by the financial industry is lacking.

Existing small businesses with opportunities to expand are hampered in their efforts to grow .... and business startups, while still there are starting with little or no cash dramatically increasing their chances of failing.

I am not an economic expert, but it seems that while lip service is given to support small business by the government and financial sector .... the available credit is going to finance the government itself and those industries chosen by elected officials.

I do worry that these efforts by our Federal government (sic Obama Administration) will slow down if not totally negate any growth we could realize from the small business sector.

In order to return us to economic stability, the US will have to create 250k jobs PER MONTH for the next FIVE YEARS. There is no way that large corporations are willing to create that many American jobs. We're going to need small business.

The strength of the American economy has always been thriving small businesses - not mammoth multinational corporations or "too big to fail" banks. I think the choice is obvious...

Small business and entrepreneurial spirit is the true reflection of authentic American ideals. Those who think all business and capitalism is bad should live accordingly. Go live alone somewhere in the wilderness and attempt to survive strictly off the land for just a week...

Small businesses and entrepreneurs are key...and to do that government needs to get out of the way.

For government to get out of the way we need the conservative revolution to kick the Dem's out of control ..... and kick the Republican party bosses out so we can get back to the values of small government and personal responsibility.

The problem, folks, is job loss. The solution is "real" private sector job creation; not more government service jobs -- which are at best a short-term fix and a long-term liability.

Small business will lead us out of this recession. Small businesses have the speed and flexibility to react and adapt to changing markets and economic conditions ..... and will find a way to succeed.

The little guy with everything to lose does not have government lobbyists, or get bailout money. Instead they survive or fail in the market as it is this month, this quarter, this year. This makes small business much more motiviated to find a way to succeed.

In contrast, big business lumbers through a recession and hopes to weather the storm because they cannot react or change quickly enough. Instead, they complain in the media and get their bailout money to finance "business as usual." This lack of adaptability also killed the dinosaurs.

So our best hope for a sustained recovery ..... comes from small business and entrepreneurs.