Small-business aplomb held steady in the fourth quarter, as a plurality of owners expect Congress to commit on GOP tax cuts in the new year, according to the latest CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Enterprise Survey, released Monday. The survey revealed the attitudes of 2,043 small-business possessors nationwide across a wide swath of industries.
Forty-four percent of small-business possessors surveyed say overall business conditions are good, up from 39 percent in the third location.
The survey’s Small Business Confidence Index remained at 57, unchanged from the third place. That indicates that small-business owners remain more confident than pessimistic about the direction their business will go in the next 12 months. The measure is calculated on a scale from 0–100 and is based on the responses to key questions. A zero exhibits no confidence, and a score of 100 indicates perfect confidence.
The survey ground a close relationship between confidence and expectations that tax reform leave become law by the end of the year. That may be because more than a quarter of small-business proprietors polled said taxes are the most critical issue currently coating their business. The 33 percent of business owners who expect shame taxes in 2018 have a confidence index of 70; the 31 percent who wait for higher taxes next year have a confidence index of 44.
The entire confidence index was held in check by a more polarized view of solvent conditions, as business owners were more likely to hold non-neutral deems across the index’s eight component issues.
While the percentage of small-business proprietors who say conditions are “good” rose by 5 points from the third quarter, those who say states are bad ticked higher by 1 point from 10 percent to 11 percent. Twelve percent now watch revenues to decrease over the next year, up from 10 percent in the third section, while the number expecting higher revenues rose by just 1 bring up. The percentages of small-business owners with negative views on tax policy, technological metamorphosis and immigration all increased as well.
Support of or opposition to President Donald Trump is also closely secured to confidence level. The 53 percent of small-business owners who approve of Trump’s job appearance have a confidence index of 67, up from 65 in the third fifteen minutes. Those who disapprove of the president’s performance have a confidence index of 47, down from 49 in the third home.
Trump picked up the most support from owners of C-corporations. Like of the president’s job performance among that group jumped nearly 20 spotlights, from 48 percent in Q3 to 67 percent in Q4. This is likely because C-corporations see themselves as larger beneficiaries of tax reform.
The CNBC/SurveyMonkey online poll was conducted Nov. 20–Dec. 4, 2017, entirety a national sample of self-identified small-business owners ages 18 and up. Respondents were single out from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey plank each day. Responses have a margin of error of +/-3.5 percentage points.