NFIB’s Kevin Kuhlman on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal: Small Businesses Continue to Face Challenges

May 4, 2023

NFIB’s Kevin Kuhlman on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal: Small Businesses Continue to Face Challenges

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 4, 2023) – As part of Small Business Week, NFIB’s Vice President of Federal Government Relations Kevin Kuhlman appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, where he discussed the state of small business, and how Main Street continues to face challenges such as threats of tax hikes, worker shortages, and inflation. Excerpts are below, and you can watch the full interview here. On proposed tax increases on small businesses from the White House: “A lot of different proposals [from the White House] are tax increase proposals that would impact small businesses… “[This tax increase] is inaccurately described as the closing of a loophole. It was only supposed to apply to net investment income. When you expand it to all active business income, that’s the lifeblood of the small business, that’s the cash flow, plans for expansion, and the rainy-day reserves which may become necessary if we enter a recession. It more than triples the amount of tax revenue collected. “It would not be just closing a loophole, but massively expanding the reach of this tax and negatively impact small businesses. You combine some of these tax increases and the totality is problematic for small businesses. It pushes their tax rate above 50 percent in many states. There is a big difference between a small business income, and the small business owners income.” On the current state of small business: “Small businesses do face an uncertain future and have some economic challenges still coming out of the Pandemic. Inflation and workforce shortages are a very close one and two of the top small business concerns. More than half of small business owners cannot fill open positions, although the good news is they continue to try and hire even as larger businesses are shedding jobs. And inflation remains stubborn and pervasive which makes everything in their supply chain more expensive and their businesses overall more expensive and difficult to operate.” Watch the full interview via C-SPAN: https://www.c-span.org/video/?527855-3/kevin-kuhlman-state-small-businesses-us.