As the presidential choosing campaign picks up momentum, many entrepreneurs and small-business owners are hungering for solutions to the issues they care about. And they are looking for the possibility who is addressing their concerns best.
“So far, the candidates haven’t said a lot around small business,” said John Arensmeyer, founder and CEO of the Small Obligation Majority, a network of 42,000 small-business owners. Although both preceding Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) receive outlined a small-business plan, most of the other candidates have dreamed broad-brush proposals on many of the issues. Even the Clinton and Rubio map outs lack some key specifics.
Alexander Reichmann, 27, whose function iTestCash, in Monsey, New York, offers products for secure handling of realize, worries about the impact high taxes may have on the ability of small-business proprietresses like himself to invest money in hiring, marketing and other areas basic to business growth. He said he isn’t “running toward” any of the candidates but has been influenced in Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) ideas on abolishing the IRS and adopting a flat tax. Still, he supplements, “I don’t know his exact plans.”
These election-cycle small-business issues are acutely divided along party lines. Republicans are touting tax cuts, the end of Obamacare, antithetical to an increase in the minimum wage and restrictions on illegal immigration. In opposition, Democrats don’t craving to repeal Obamacare, but modify the law to ease mandates on small business. They scarcity to raise taxes, increase the $7.25/hr minimum wage and ease the scheme to immigration (see the interactive table above for the candidates’ positions on the issues).
Queried to choose among Republican candidates, 60 percent of respondents opted for Trump, while 16 percent cited Cruz and 5 percent big shot Rubio in the Manta poll. When it came to Democrats, 56 percent favored Clinton, and 40 percent named Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont).
Trump also happened as the front-runner in a poll by Alignable, a social network for small business, where 29 percent of owners turned Donald Trump would help their business most as president. Sanders (23 percent) and Clinton (19 percent) followed Trump. Alignable commissioned SurveyMonkey to escort its nationwide poll between Jan. 26 and Feb. 10, 2016.
A big factor that has made Trump the entrepreneurial favorite is that he’s a thriving entrepreneur who empathizes with the challenges business owners face.
His pro-business classes: cap business taxes at 15 percent and lower individual tax rates (with a top bawl out of 25 percent) and eliminate the estate tax so family-owned businesses can pass along assets to their beneficiaries; repeal Obamacare and replace it; and kill free-trade agreements, like the TPP.
In his a great extent discussed and controversial stance on immigration, Trump has proposed building a screen along the southern border of the U.S. to keep low-paid foreign labor from come ining the U.S., and he has criticized the H-1B visa program that allows employers to hire stopgap foreign skilled workers.
Michael Miller, who runs Mindwhirl Trade ining in Denver with his wife, Shelly, finds Trump’s brash make a bit off-putting but believes the candidate has the experience and ability to improve the economy. “I desire to win again,” says Miller, who says his business hasn’t fully repossessed from the Great Recession, as many of his small-business clients are feeling hearty.
Among the Democrats, Clinton — who says she wants to be the “small-business president” — is the front-runner for nugatory business. She has promised she will give small businesses more access to first-rate, launch a national effort to cut red tape that is impeding small vocations, and provide targeted tax relief for small businesses with simplified tax classifying. Her plan also includes providing incubators, mentoring and training to 5,000 small-business holders in underserved communities and developing entrepreneurial skills in young people.
Clinton has also appear likely to defend the Export-Import Bank of the U.S. — a quasi-government agency that helps small-business possessors get trade financing — which was reauthorized in December after Congress let its be fitting authority lapse in July. Clinton advocates “comprehensive immigration remodel, with a pathway to citizenship.” She has pledged to defend the Affordable Care Act and uplift it to slow the growth of out-of-pocket costs.
Sanders, meanwhile, has said he resolve encourage small-business lending by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, repealed during the Clinton supervision. After the repeal, “local banks increasingly began to invest in precarious Wall Street trading and speculation and became less inclined to net low-interest loans to small businesses,” his website claims.
Sanders has stipulate he also supports increased access to entrepreneurship education, patent betterment to prevent abuse by big corporations, net neutrality — where Internet service providers put up for sale equal access to all information — and visa reform, which will “decline the exploitation of workers and the use of visas for cheap, foreign labor,” his website signifies. He also supports single-payer health care.
On the Republican side, the seekers have different approaches in support of Main Street.
Promising on his website that he settle upon “stand up for small-business owners,” Rubio promises to cut taxes for small duties to 25 percent, let businesses immediately expense new investments and permanently cancel the estate tax. He also said he wants to repeal Obamacare, push for responsible regulatory policies, expand production of American-made energy and impose stipulations on union activity, such as prohibiting them from deducing coalition dues from workers’ paychecks. His stance on immigration is built hither securing the border.
Cruz, who announced the formation of the Small Business for Cruz Coalition in November, has expected to eliminate the IRS and transition from the tiered federal income-tax system to a set aside flat tax of 10 percent. He also wants to replace the corporate tax with a 16 percent “responsibility flat tax.” When it comes to immigration, his campaign has also focused on anchoring the border.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich has proposed reducing the number of federal tax links from seven to three and cutting the top personal tax rate from 39.6 percent to 28 percent and the top concern rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. He also opposes the estate tax and has proposed repealing a number of mandates of the Affordable Care Act. Kasich is also an exponent of sealing the border.
But the real test for small-business owners will be when the aspirants are forced to become more specific. Jeff Salter, founder and CEO of Caring Superior Services in San Antonio, Texas, can attest to that. He is hoping to throw his stick up for behind a candidate whose immigration policy will enable entrepreneurial bodies like his franchise chain — which provides non-medical home-based pains for seniors — to look for qualified workers in Mexico, to keep pace with the tumour of the elderly population.
“I think it’s an important election,” says Salter. “I’m benefit close attention to it.”
— By Elaine Pofeldt, special to CNBC.com