Healthcare Reform Helps Bookstore Owner Keep Doors Open

It’s been a year since the president signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. Many provisions of the law address small businesses No. 1 concern—rising healthcare costs. In Utah, Betsy Burton was saved from making the difficult choice of either closing her business or continuing to offer healthcare to her employees thanks to small business healthcare tax credits.

Betsy Burton was worried last year that she might have to close the book on her business after more than three decades of success.

The antagonist in her story was the soaring cost of healthcare insurance. Burton offers full healthcare insurance to the seven full-time employees of her Salt Lake City bookstore, The King’s English, which she has operated for 33 years. But the premiums had grown to $78,000 a year, nearly a third of her payroll expenses, and Burton was at the point where she thought she had to stop offering insurance or close her doors—an agonizing decision.

“My employees are like family to me, and I put too much time and energy into building my business to stand helplessly by while rising insurance costs hurt my workers or destroyed my bookshop,” she said.

So she learned about what was in the Affordable Care Act, signed into law a year ago, for small businesses. Burton found the act contains a provision that allows employers to claim a tax credit for up to 35 percent of their insurance premiums in 2010.

She learned she qualified for the maximum tax credit, $21,000 in her case, and she didn’t have to make the make the decision between closing her shop or cutting health care benefits. “I might even be able to grow my business,” Burton said.