Small business owners are my heroes. My grandparents were small business owners in Campbell County, KY. My great-grandparents on my other side were small business owners in Kenton County, KY. I know many small business owners from my work with NKY Choice, the "anti-smoking-ban" group formed in 2008.
Small business owners risk everything to be their own boss, and to fulfill the American Dream; to become independent and support themselves.
Small businesses already have a tough time out there. The majority of them fail within the first 5 years, for a myriad of reasons.
On top of the normal issues that have traditionally faced small businesses, there is now the Kentucky Alternative Minimum Tax, now re-branded as the Limited Liability Entity Tax -- I personally like to call it the Ernie Fletcher tax. Some communities have smoking bans, which hurt those restaurants as well. Minimum wage goes up to $7.25/hr on July 24th.
All of these are the issues facing today's existing small businesses. At this point, trying to start a new small business is almost pointless, which I'm not convinced isn't the goal anyway.
Even with everything stacked against them, small businesses still employ 52% of Americans.
The Kentucky League of Cities is now proposing a measure to allow cities to charge a restaurant tax.
There are a few communities already charging this tax, which I'm fairly certain is illegal under current KRS. I'm not sure about that, but I've told the people who have contacted me, so far, about current restaurant taxes, to contact a lawyer and sue.
These new taxes, if they are permitted by Frankfort, would present yet another hurdle in the struggle of the small businesses to survive.
We need to let our legislators know that we do not support higher taxes to solve our current financial woes. Stop killing the American Dream. Instead, we should look to trim government.
The majority of people agree that government should be providing law enforcement, fire protection, and roads. All three items are common needs that practically every citizen needs.
Everything else is extraneous, or only helps a certain segment of the population. Even public schools only help the young, and in Kentucky, we've seen how inefficient the state is at providing that education, and efficient only at spending money (and not on teachers).
We need to scale back the scope of government, in order to fix our budget problem. The threats of cutting law enforcement, fire protection, or road projects should be met with anger towards legislators, not a call for higher taxes. Once the small businesses are run out of business, who will pay the taxes? Who will provide jobs for people to have money to even pay those taxes?
And no more deficit spending or bonding, which only shifts the burden to our children and grandchildren.
I again propose the "prioritized budget" plan. Each line-item of the budget should be assigned a priority, and a dollar amount. Once the money is gone, Frankfort stops spending.
It's what your family does, when it's out of money. It's what businesses do, when they're running short of money. Why should government be any different?