SMALL GESTURE
Business owners engage in informal meeting
Linda McMahon, administrator of the Small Business Administration, hugs Kathleen Sarniak-Tanzola, president and CEO of Jeannette Specialty Glass, on Monday after a discussion with small business owners at the agency’s office in Downtown. Story,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Linda McMahon is well known as co-founder with her husband, Vince, of World Wrestling Entertainment, a $1.58 billion enterprise that can draw 2 million to 3 million cable viewers for its WWE Raw shows.
As the 25th administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, though, Ms. McMahon is taking a lower-profile approach as she advocates for America’s 28 million small business owners.
Ms. McMahon was in Pittsburgh on Monday to meet informally with the local SBA staff members and a handful of local small business owners, part of her “listening tour” in which she plans to visit all 68 SBA district offices over the next two years.
“You can write policy all day in Washington,” she explained in a brief interview at the SBA district offices Downtown, “but if you don’t get out in the field and listen to entrepreneurs and listen to the front line staff, you don’t learn what they need.”
The six local women business owners she met didn’t hold back on what they’d like to see: Lower business taxes, less cumbersome regulations and more predictable costs to doing business.
The current tax structure “is far too complicated,” Wendy Staso of Huckestein Mechanical Services on the North Shore told her. Simplify it, she added, “so small businesses can run our businesses, invest in our businesses and grow our businesses.”
Two owners said they intentionally kept their full-time workforce below 50 employees to avoid the Affordable Care Act regulations that would require them to offer employees an affordable health care plan that covers at least 60 percent of the cost of medical services or face a penalty.
While a decision on ACA’s future may come to a vote this week, Ms. McMahon noted that President Donald Trump has proposed a 15 percent tax rate on business income, well down from the current maximum 35 percent rate.
Proponents say the change would boost to job-creation efforts and help small business owners, who often work on smaller profit margins, plan and budget better. For that, Ms. McMahon credits her boss.
“I don’t know that we’ve had a president who has been so focused on small business growth and development.”
Critics, meanwhile, believe the 15 percent rate for businesses large and small would be too costly and unfairly benefit wealthy corporations.
There is considerable money at stake: According to the nonpartisan UrbanBrookings Tax Policy Center in Washington, D.C., the $343.8 billion in corporate income taxes collected in fiscal 2015 represented the third-largest source of federal revenue behind individual income tax and payroll taxes.
Aside from what happens in Washington, Ms. McMahon and Pittsburgh District director Kelly Hunt both pointed to another concern for small manufacturing businesses — a lack of skilled workers to fill an estimated 60 million job vacancies for trade positions such as welders and machinists.
“Those are the type skills that are lacking,” Ms. Hunt said.
There are other concerns as well, she said, such as China selling its goods at cheaper prices due to its lower manufacturing costs. “How do you compete with that?” she asked. “Most manufacturers want to make their products in America, but they just can’t because it’s not economical.”
Some small businesses see a domestic threat as well, Ms. Hunt added.
“Amazon has become the elephant in the room.
They’re everywhere, so small business owners are feeling this pressure that they either sell on Amazon [for lower profit] or they are not going to make it.”