Tax policy

Every year around this time, we think about what the year ahead might bring and how we can make it better than the last. To make 2014 a success, we must find ways to bolster our still-recovering economy. Supporting the middle class is one way to do that. A recent study indicates income inequality is at the highest it’s been in 100 years, with the top 10 percent of earners taking more than half the country’s total income in 2012.

Rhett Buttle

John Arensmeyer

John Arensmeyer

Small business has been the focus of Washington’s high-profile tax debate, both prior to and following the “fiscal cliff” fracas that closed out 2012. But as noisy as the small business tax issue has been, there’s been considerably more time spent debating cuts that will help a thin sliver of taxpayers in the top brackets than hashing out solutions that will help the vast majority of entrepreneurs

The New Year is just around the corner, which means we’re mere days away from falling off the so-called fiscal cliff. This impending situation — created by a vast array of tax provisions set to expire January 1, at the same time that across-the-board spending cuts start to kick in — could spell disaster for the small business community and our slowly recovering economy.

John Arensmeyer

As Fairfax, Va., small business owner Mike Brey prepares to close the books on 2012, he’s also starting to make expansion plans. But he hasn’t sealed the deal on his two new Hobby Works stores yet — largely because of growing economic uncertainty as we race toward the edge of the “fiscal cliff.”

John Arensmeyer

As the year progresses, small business owners are becoming increasingly iconic in Washington. In the latest round of legislative battles over whether to eliminate tax breaks for high-income earners, the small business voice is unscrupulously being leveraged to push a partisan agenda — an agenda that assumes small business owners are high-income earners. But there’s a problem. For the most part, they’re not. And the real voices of small business owners are fighting to be heard.