More Things Affecting Small Business

June 18, 2014
By Glenn Conley

More Things Affecting Small Business

Going into the summer budgets, we get 3rd quarter questions about incentives, discounts, or any extra possible savings. One nice depreciation deduction is now 5 years old but this year has taken a serious reduction. It’s called Section 179 of the US Internal Revenue Code. I know that doesn’t sound very sexy, but what it does is allows you to deduct the cost of certain types of property on your income taxes as an expense, instead of requiring the cost of the property to be capitalized and depreciated. It’s limited to personal property that is considered tangible and depreciable and purchased for the reason of conducting business, such as a new phone system. There is a dollar limitation too. It started out at $500,000 in 2010 through 2013 which stimulated small business to purchase new products, but has been reduced to $25,000 plus an adjustment for inflation, in years after 2013.

I know that all of us have been flooded with inflamed news over deserters, redskins, global weather changing, VA, and on and on, but let’s make sure that we try to hold on to our last few pennies before those go bye-bye.  Last week I saw a very small press release from Congressman Pat Tiberi from Ohio saying that the House passed a bill which included both Democrats and Republicans called H.R. 4457 by a vote of 272-144. It was called America’s Small Business Tax Relief Act and it was designed to create stability for small businesses by making the dollar limitation $500,000 permanently plus allowing for inflation. It now goes to the Senate for consideration. Oh boy…

Other considerations for our small business owners to breath in, this week we are faced with the price of electricity and energy just hitting an all time high in May 2014 and the federal government collected $414.23 Billion in revenue in April, which is the largest total ever for a single month and also set a record for the most revenue collected in the first seven months of any fiscal year.

It’s my recommendation that our Representatives and Senators in Congress make sure that Small Business owners be allowed to use as many incentives as possible to ensure we are not hurt, and limiting the Section 179 amounts will most certainly hurt small business.