Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Revisiting President Obama's Small-Business Tax Cut Claims

This summer, the number 18 has crept into President Obama's campaign speeches — as in, "We've cut taxes for small businesses 18 times." (That's from a speech in Melbourne, Fla., earlier this month.) The first lady, Michelle Obama, mentions it, too. And, of course, it came up frequently at the Democratic National Convention a few weeks ago, where it caught the attention of a regular You're The Boss commenter who calls himself Einstein. (No, not that Einstein.)
"Which small businesses had their taxes cut?" Einstein recently asked. "Hate to be skeptical but I know a lot of small-business owners and independent contractors and they never heard of ANY tax cuts. All this talk of helping small business from both political parties sounds like lip service. What are the facts?"
Happy to oblige, Einstein. Back in 2010, when the administration's boast was that it had merely cut taxes 16 times, The Agenda wrote a post about it. Here are the White House's 16 "tax cuts."
From the 2009 stimulus, the Affordable Care Act, and other legislation:
• A new small-business health care tax credit.
• A tax credit for hiring unemployed workers in 2010.
• Temporary extension of bonus depreciation tax incentives to support new investment.
• 75 percent exclusion of small-business capital gains, for stock acquired in 2009 and 2010.
• Temporary expansion of limits on small-business expensing.
• Five-year carryback of net operating losses, available through fall 2009.
• Reduction of the built-in gains holding period for small businesses to seven years, from 10, in 2009 and 2010. 

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