NFIB Member Advocate: “Our Family Small Business Needs Congress To Act”

November 14, 2023 Last Edit: June 5, 2025

NFIB PA member John Makrias makes the case from experience for Congress to make the federal Small Business Deduction permanent.

NFIB Member Advocate: "Our Family Small Business Needs Congress To Act"

Our Family Small Business Needs Congress To Act By John Makrias Will Congress save my family’s small business? That’s the question we’ve been asking for the past few years. Like millions of small businesses nationwide, our rental center is facing one of the biggest tax hikes in American history. We need Congress to give us relief, so we can keep giving raises to our team and giving back to our hometown. This crisis has been coming since 2018. That’s when Congress passed the Small Business Deduction, which lets job creators like ours deduct 20% of our income. The whole point of this tax cut was to put small business on a more level playing field with big businesses. It’s the opposite of the typical Wall Street special-interest handout, since it makes our economy more free and fair for Main Street. But there was always a problem. Big businesses have permanent tax breaks, but the Small Business Deduction is temporary. It’s set to expire in about two years. For a company like ours, that’s the blink of an eye, and if Congress doesn’t act, the consequences will be disastrous. Without the Small Business Deduction, we couldn’t continue doing all the incredible things we’ve done since 2018. From the moment we got the tax cut, we plowed the savings right back into our business and workers. To start, we’ve boosted wages for every single one of our full-time workers. They’re all making at least $15 an hour, which goes a long way in a town like York. To this day, the tax cut makes it a lot easier for us to compete for workers and treat them like family. We invested in new equipment, too. The tax cut helped us afford a new boom lift. We also bought a new concrete mixer, which has let us expand into landscaping. Across the board, with the extra money, we’re growing our small business like never before, while building up the community we love. The tax cut has even empowered me and my wife to start a new e-commerce business. It’s one of the hardest things we’ve ever done, but the tax cut gives us confidence that we can make ends meet, especially in the first couple years when sales are lean and growth is slow. I’ve talked with dozens of entrepreneurs in York who say they wouldn’t have started their business without the Small Business Deduction. We couldn’t keep boosting wages, buying new equipment, or starting new small businesses without this tax cut. What’s more, if the deduction disappears, we’d probably have to roll back the progress we’ve already made. This would be a nightmare scenario for small business. When you suddenly have to pay 20% more in taxes, you look for ways to cut back. That can mean cutting your teams’ hours. It could mean keeping older equipment that’s not as effective or maybe past its useful lifespan. It could even mean making harder decisions in the long run. We’re talking decisions about whether the business survives or dies. Meanwhile, our big business competitors would do just fine. They’d still have their tax cuts. But small businesses like ours wouldn’t have ours. Wall Street would race even further ahead, while Main Street would fall even further behind. Congress alone can prevent this crisis. All our lawmakers need to do is make the Small Business Deduction permanent. They don’t even need to wait until 2025, when it’s set to expire. If Congress made it permanent now, small businesses like ours would have the confidence to continue hiring more people and investing more in our hometown. The future of my family’s small business is on the line. So are the futures of millions of other small businesses. What is Congress waiting for? John Makrias is operations manager at A & R Rental Center in York, Pennsylvania.

Topics:

Taxes

State:

Pennsylvania

Get to know NFIB

NFIB is a member-driven organization advocating on behalf of small and independent businesses nationwide.

Learn More