President Obama’s proposed tax hike on the top 2% of incomes will do next to nothing to close our chronic budget deficits, now running more than $1 trillion a year.
But it will have a major impact on one struggling part of our economy: small business.
In his Wednesday press conference, just before meeting with representatives of the nation’s largest businesses, the president again claimed his plan to reduce the deficit and avoid the fiscal cliff would mean that “97% of small businesses are not going to see their taxes go up.”
But this is, to put it politely, deceptive. By jacking up taxes on the most successful 3% of small businesses, Obama will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, shrink U.S. output and force companies to raise prices.
As usual, the data tell the story.
America has some 34.8 million small businesses, according to a recent Treasury Department study. Sounds like a lot, until you consider that 30 million of them employ no one other than the owner.
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