CARSON CITY, Nev., Dec. 22, 2015—Last week, Nevada Senators Dean Heller and Harry Reid took important votes to make permanent a tax provision that allows small businesses to expense equipment purchases. The bill passed Congress and was signed by the President.
“Congress is infamous for kicking the can down the road, which is why small business is praising a new law that permanently extends a tax provision that helps it grow the economy,” said Randi Thompson, Nevada state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. “Senators Heller and Reid, and our state’s entire House delegation, deserve small businesses’ praise for supporting this provision as it worked its ways through Congress. For years, small-business owners have had to guess from year to year about whether Section 179 expensing would be renewed. A permanent provision gives entrepreneurs the green light to start expanding their businesses. This is huge for Nevada, and we thank Senators Heller and Reid for doing the right thing for small business, America’s largest employer group.”
Under the Section 179 provision of the IRS code, businesses can now expense up to $500,000 of new investment in heavy machinery, office equipment, computer technology and many other big-ticket items that they need. When the Bush tax cuts expired, the amount that small firms could expense dropped down to $25,000 and expired every year, unless Congress extended it.
“Predictability.” At a news conference with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell before the vote, NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner stressed that word as the key to unlocking the job-generating machine small business is. That new predictability “will create thousands and thousands of new jobs,” said Danner. After Senate passage of the federal budget, Danner called it “easily the most positive thing Congress has done for small business in the past several years, and it will ripple through the economy in the form of new investments and more jobs. The tax benefit encourages businesses to make big investments and the permanency creates predictability. Our research predicts that we’ll see hundreds of thousands of new jobs as a result.”
NOTE TO EDITORS—A 545-word guest editorial by Randi Thompson can be found on the NFIB/Nevada web page here. You are free to use it as content for your publications and websites, or as background information for any related stories. The National Federation of Independent Business is the nation’s largest and leading small-business association with 350,000 members nationwide, including nearly 2,000 in Nevada. According to the latest data by the U.S. Small Business Administration, small business make up 99.7 percent of all employer firms, creating 63 percent of net new, private sector employment.
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For more than 70 years, the National Federation of Independent Business has been the Voice of Small Business, taking the message from Main Street to the halls of Congress and all 50 state legislatures. NFIB annually surveys its members on state and federal issues vital to their survival as America’s economic engine and biggest creator of jobs. NFIB’s educational mission is to remind policymakers that small businesses are not smaller versions of bigger businesses; they have very different challenges and priorities.
National Federation of Independent Business/Nevada
140 Washington St. #150
Reno, NV 89503
775-830-8407
Twitter: @NFIB_NV
