gofer articles

Why are a great many small business owners against a simple small business tax in the United States? Okay, so they would claim that they’re not against such thing in principle, but only in practice, in terms of the very high rates in particular. But just how high are these rates, really?

For many, a small business tax amounts to no more than around thirty percent of gross earnings. A third of all income seems like a great deal, but include all the local, state, and federal tax breaks that exist, not to mention tax credits and other special provisions for specific circumstances, and many a company with under a hundred employees will end up paying no more than somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty percent, give or take a few points.

That’s a relatively modest form of small business tax, is it not? But why then do so many rail against it? Why do people not feel like contributing to the common good, whether in theory or practice? Could it be only a matter of greed? Or perhaps is it in fact a really deep-seated alienation? And not only are businessmen and women are in opposition to such taxes but even people who do not really own a small business!

It isn’t simply that these people want to one day be business owners themselves and therefore identify with the (imagined) plight of business owners. It’s a deep sense of alienation, even when they don’t recognize it themselves as such. Such people don’t believe they have very much in common with the wider society, whatever lip-service they may pay to societal conventions. Thus they don’t feel there to be a reason to contribute.

They would contribute to that which they think to be important. So what is it about America where so many of its citizens will wave the flag but not vote with their pocketbooks?