I’m keeping an open mind, because it’s all rumor so far. Political gossip, this idea that all small businesses will be forced to pony up even more than they do already, just past the breaking point.
It probably needs not be said, but I think most small business owners I’ve ever known, are the salt of this earth; the ones who keep wearing last year’s and last decade’s fashions, who drive the car ten years past its scrap pile date, who love their work and their customers, who feel pride of ownership and happiness that they can help others earn a living… and provide a good service for others.
In my own small business, and I’ve been self employed for 38 years and employ 3.5 others… I am daily glad, like millions of small business owners, that we can call many of those we serve, our friends… that we know them by name, ask after their children, the health and welfare of their parents, their interests, their challenges and triumphs. And often enough, they ask after us too.
But there’s been dark clouds gathering over small businesses for quite some time now. This current economic ‘crisis’ did not begin last month. It began several years ago with shifts in gatekeepers, falls of suppliers, unreal increases in costs, and all we small business owners have been learning and leaning and veering and rocking and rolling with the punches ever since.
So, its usual to scry ahead in anticipation, as any good small business owner has to do constantly… you try to ‘see ahead’ and prepare to be present to opportunity, while hopefully wisely planning for the difficult….
Thus and sadly, some of my colleagues had the “layoff” talk at their small businesses this morning.
The dream of a ‘new world,’ but the potential reality of new costly mandates from fed government for businesses like theirs– that are way smaller than the ‘50 employees-50 trucks,’ used in many examples– are impossible to meet without letting people go.
Their choice of direction is not a mad-on. It’s just a fact of math. This is what my colleagues feel certain about:
–We have trimmed everything we can trim and still put out quality services.
–We have put off needed repairs and replacements.
–we have taken loans when needed to cover necessary capital expenditures
–we have paid back loans and on time in order to keep our credit clear
–we have either no cushion, or some cushion saved back for a couple months of catastrophe.
–we cannot borrow money to pay new expenses mandated by government
–As a small business owner myself, like many other small business owners, I note people in service and goods’ industries have clientele, providers and orderers who are pulling back now. This creates more of ‘the impossible math.’ The small businesses cannot pay more, do more, even as suppliers raise prices and customers hold back. Not even on a good day.
— Where we small business owners live, we pay sales tax, property tax (on office equipment inventory every year), the head taxes, the FICA tax share, unemployment taxes, workman’s comp, (not to mention three kinds of insurance and employer contributions to retirement funds for employees) and… the profound real estate taxes just keep going up and up, especially now– (currently our real estate taxes are based on assessments fully 20%+ higher than the actual sale value of properties, citywide.) (And this list of required taxes and commitments to employees, is not complete here.)
The City and State governments are not merciful, give no grace to those who cannot pay those often obscene tax increases that most often do not return to benefit small businesses, but rather benefit the mayor and governor’s projects of the moment…which are often enough profoundly over budget.
…Matters here for small business are already at the breaking point, in part because state and city taxes on our businesses have been bearing down relentlessly for years now every time the governor or mayor has a new idea of giving grotesquely large tax breaks to developers and big businesses. The small business owners feel helpless and are always the runts of the litter, kicked to the side of the road when government help or opportunity is offered to ‘the big boys.’
…Whereas big corporations are often given city, federal and state government ‘help’ in the many $$$, and that some large companies sometimes even run illegally but are never pulled up short… I think I can say that most small businesses with community ties are honest… and most often are offered nothing gratis, and in fact treated too often as ‘tax beasts of burden’…. while much of new corporate is offered the keys to the city with sweeping bows. I cannot say I will ever understand this disparity.
Nonetheless, the basic realities are that small businesses ought never be thought of as some kind of endless cornucopia for new regimes.
—If, whomever gains POTUS suddenly forces small businesses that are delicately balanced as it is, to give even more? It will amount to giving, that’s true. Sadly, it’ll amount to ‘giving up’ loyal and long-term employees because one can’t meet the unrealistic mandates without the entire business going under.
I loathe thinking that that’s where all small business owners will be herded.
If one sees a small business doing well, you can be sure that it is well run and carefully shrinking and expanding with the customers actual needs, rocking and rolling with spiraling costs AND there really is an able and watchful captain at the wheel who watches EVERY cent that comes in and goes out…
But, most of all, as a small business owner who has managed to live through recessions and upturns, washouts and inflations, stagflations, competitions and side-swipes –and who is still standing after some of the worst and difficult challenges — I can promise that if you see a small business thriving, look closer to see that that business also, already, carries a huge tax burden, and that the owner for certain, and often many of the employees too, regularly work an 80+ hour week for 40- hours pay…
and that there is no ‘time off,’ no time away, no handing the reins over to someone else, no 450k spa retreats, no government subsidies, no ‘incentives,’ unless you count secretary’s day at Olive Garden.
And, those business crisis phone calls at 3am? There’s only one person who answers those calls every time. And it’s not the guys 2000 miles away in DC.