Time for Facts: The Death Tax’s Impact on Small Business

by Adam Nicholson - No Comments
Posted on March 15th, 2010 9:35 am

Surprise, surprise.

As support wanes for a retroactive death tax, the proponents of small business confiscation have rehashed some of their old distortions.

One of their favorites is the straw man claim – most recently revived by Bill Scher at the Campaign for America’s Future – that only “80 small businesses are affected” by the death tax. The impudence of this claim is astounding – it has no basis in reality – except for the reality of Scher and his friends at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).

You see, CBPP made its “finding” by creating its own definition of small business – a definition with no basis in official policy. CBPP defines a small business as one which has less than $5 million in total business assets.

The Small Business Administration offers its own standards of small business, which can be as large as 1,500 employees and have $175 million in gross assets. That's a tad bigger than $5 million!

When confronted with this problem, Scher claimed it was an “apples to oranges” comparison. Indeed, and his friends at the CBPP have failed to make the case as to why their unsubstantiated apples are better than the SBA’s (the government’s) oranges. His definition of small business has no credibility.

None.

Yet he – and others – persist in using their inaccurate definition to make sweeping policy claims.

A little honesty. Is that too much to ask?

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