Thursday, September 16, 2010

Small business bill passes Senate vote.

With renewed hopes of passing this bill after a July Republican filibuster, Democrats were able to bring the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010 to a vote, and passed with two Republicans crossing the aisle.

According to the LA Times, the small business bill included an extension of SBA loan fee waivers, deduction for health care costs for self-employed, and immediate write offs of business equipment investments.

Any self-employed person - who has followed the IRS rules - would know that unlike companies who provide health care to their employees, self-employed persons had to follow the  7.5% AGI rule.  This bill basically corrects a long-standing wrong.

The House version also included $30B in direct help for small business lending via small banks, an allowance of 100% of proceeds from the sale of stock of small businesses to be tax-free, increases the start-up costs deduction from $5,000 to $10,000, and requires each executive agency to go over their documents and rewrite them in plain English.  That last item might sound odd, but people tend to write in a different style when they've been steeped in legalese / contract language for years.

Once reconciliation of the two bills is considered and both chambers re-vote on the bill, we will know what exactly made it to the final passage.

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