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87–461 2014

THE BIGGEST TAX PROBLEMS FOR SMALL 

BUSINESSES 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS 

UNITED STATES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

HEARING HELD 

APRIL 9, 2014 

Small Business Committee Document Number 113–065 

Available via the GPO Website: www.fdsys.gov 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER


Congress.#13
(II) 

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri, Chairman 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado 

BLAINE LUETKEMEYER, Missouri 

MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina 

SCOTT TIPTON, Colorado 

JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington 

RICHARD HANNA, New York 

TIM HUELSKAMP, Kansas 

DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona 

KERRY BENTIVOLIO, Michigan 

CHRIS COLLINS, New York 

TOM RICE, South Carolina 

NYDIA VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York, Ranking Member 

KURT SCHRADER, Oregon 

YVETTE CLARKE, New York 

JUDY CHU, California 

JANICE HAHN, California 

DONALD PAYNE, JR., New Jersey 

GRACE MENG, New York 

BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois 

RON BARBER, Arizona 

ANN McLANE KUSTER, New Hampshire 

PATRICK MURPHY, Florida 

LORI SALLEY, Staff Director 

PAUL SASS, Deputy Staff Director 

BARRY PINELES, Chief Counsel 

MICHAEL DAY, Minority Staff Director 

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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

OPENING STATEMENTS 

Page 

Hon. Sam Graves ..................................................................................................... 1 

Hon. Nydia Vela ́zquez ............................................................................................. 2 

WITNESSES 

Mr. David Kautter, Managing Director, Kogod Tax Center, Kogod School 

of Business, American University, Washington, DC ......................................... 3 

Mr. Tim Reynolds, President, Tribute, Inc., Hudson, OH, testifying on behalf 

of the National Small Business Association ...................................................... 5 

Mr. Rick Endres, President, The Washington Network, Inc., Alexandria, VA, 

testifying on behalf of the ASCII Group ............................................................ 6 

Mr. Donald Marron, Institute Fellow and Director of Economic Policy Initiatives, The Urban Institute, Washington, DC ..................................................... 8 

APPENDIX 

Prepared Statements: 

Mr. David Kautter, Managing Director, Kogod Tax Center, Kogod School 

of Business, American University, Washington, DC .................................. 27 

Mr. Tim Reynolds, President, Tribute, Inc., Hudson, OH, testifying on 

behalf of the National Small Business Association .................................... 39 

Mr. Rick Endres, President, The Washington Network, Inc., Alexandria, 

VA, testifying on behalf of the ASCII Group .............................................. 50 

Mr. Donald Marron, Institute Fellow and Director of Economic Policy 

Initiatives, The Urban Institute, Washington, DC .................................... 55 

Questions for the Record: 

None. 

Answers for the Record: 

None. 

Additional Material for the Record: 

The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) submitted by 

Katie Vlietstra, Vice-President of Government Relations & Public Affair .................................................................................................................. 67 

Sageworks submitted by Brian Hamilton, Chairman & Co-founder ............ 70 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

(1) 

THE BIGGEST TAX PROBLEMS FOR SMALL 

BUSINESSES 

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9, 2014 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON SMALL BUSINESS, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:00 p.m., in Room 

2360, Rayburn House Office Building. Hon. Sam Graves [chairman 

of the Committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Graves, Chabot, Luetkemeyer, Tipton, 

Hanna, Schweikert, Bentivolio, Collins, Vela ́zquez, Schrader, Chu, 

Hahn, Payne, Meng, Schneider, and Barber. 

Chairman GRAVES. Good afternoon. I call this hearing to order. 

Next Tuesday, April 15, Americans will once again file their annual income tax returns. For small business owners, Tax Day is yet 

another reminder of the many burdens of the tax laws. They bring 

a never-ending parade of higher rates, increased complexity, and 

ever-changing regulations. 

If you talk with small business owners often, as members of the 

Committee do, you know that individually they may be affected by 

one particular part of the tax law or another. But taken together, 

small business owners consistently tell us that they are impacted 

by higher taxes, new taxes, increasing tax code complexity, uncertainty, and the additional time required to resolve issues with the 

Internal Revenue Service. All of this means they have little ability 

to plan with confidence, and less time to grow their companies. 

One tax preparer for small businesses recently called this cumulative effect ‘‘death by a thousand cuts.’’ We know that small businesses face unique tax challenges, because research have shown 

that it is more costly and time consuming for small firms to comply 

with the tax code. But while most Americans may think about 

taxes once a year, entrepreneurs cope with multiple tax issues each 

day in operating their businesses. 

In connection with today’s hearing, the National Small Business 

Association (NSBA) is releasing its annual Tax Survey of Small 

Businesses. The survey confirms that entrepreneurs are spending 

scarce resources on federal tax compliance. About half (49 percent) 

are spending $5,000 or more per year on tax compliance—not including tax owed. Forty percent more spend more than 80 hours 

per week dealing with federal taxes, and 86 percent pay an external tax preparer to handle their taxes. The overwhelming majority 

(73 percent) said federal taxes have a significant impact on the 

day-to-day operation of their businesses. We are going to hear more 

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2 

about the survey results shortly form Tim Reynolds, who is one of 

NSBA’s members. 

Today, we hope to learn more about all of these tax issues. I 

want to thank all of our witnesses for being here. We look forward 

to hearing your testimony. And I now turn to Ranking Member 

Vela ́zquez for her opening statement. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you, Chairman Graves. 

With April 15th just around the corner, most Americans are 

wrapping up their paperwork. Yet, for many small business owners, the process never really ends. Constant changes to the tax code 

make compliance a year-round challenge for small employers. 

This is not the first time our Committee has discussed tax challenges facing small firms. The Small Business Committee has held 

numerous hearings examining how specific provisions like bonus 

depreciation and estate tax affect entrepreneurs. Yet, the most frequent complaint we hear from small employers is how our current 

tax system creates uncertainty, hindering long-term business planning and growth. 

This uncertainty is the product of a complex and outdated tax 

code. As we all know, complexity adds significantly to the cost of 

tax compliance for small firms. Modernizing this system will provide simplicity, fairness, and predictability to businesses of all 

sizes. That is why I am glad that the Senate has taken measures 

to actively extend almost all 55 extenders that expired last year. 

Now, we must give small firms some certainty that they will operate under this rule for the foreseeable future. More broadly, tax 

law operates best when small businesses have long-term certainty 

and stability. This is why fundamental tax return is imperative. 

One tax reform goal should be promoting growth and job creation. Small businesses are a vital part of that equation. Too often, 

entrepreneurs’ tax reform priorities are drawn out in the larger debate. I expect today’s discussion will yield recommendations that 

will be helpful as we work together to improve the tax environment 

for small firms. 

Although some existing tax policies provide critical relief to small 

firms, much of the code is riddled with inequities and unnecessary 

complexities. For small entities, this creates obstacles to success 

rather than encouraging economic growth. It is important that we 

continue working toward a comprehensive overhaul of the tax code 

rather than a corporate-only approach. Doing so supports our nation’s job creators by allowing them to continue hiring and expanding without warning about annual changes. Most importantly, any 

agreed-upon plan must ensure the extension of critical business expenditures. 

One critical provision is enhanced business expensing, sometimes 

called Section 179. The majority of small firms we have spoken to 

insist that this specific item must be retained. It encourages small 

entities to make purchases now while also putting more money in 

their pockets to invest and hire. 

One thing is clear about tax reform—small firm needs must come 

first. No matter the approach taken, the small business community 

wants their voice to be heard. We cannot move forward without 

their input, and we must recognize the impact of how any proposals will affect them. I believe there exists an opportunity to imSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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plement long-lasting reforms. Doing so will have immediate benefits to small businesses. 

With that, I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the 

witnesses for being here today and providing insightful information 

regarding the tax code and small businesses. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman GRAVES. All right. Our first witness is David 

Kautter, who is the managing director of Kogod Tax Center at 

American University here in Washington, D.C. Kogod Center provides research on the tax problems of small businesses. Previously, 

Mr. Kautter was the national director of tax for Ernst & Young. 

Thank you for being here. 

STATEMENTS OF DAVID KAUTTER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, 

KOGOD TAX CENTER, KOGOD SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY; TIM REYNOLDS, PRESIDENT, TRIBUTE, 

INC.; RICK ENDRES, PRESIDENT, THE WASHINGTON NETWORK, INC.; DONALD MARRON, INSTITUTE FELLOW AND DIRECTOR OF ECONOMIC POLICY INITIATIVES 

STATEMENT OF DAVID KAUTTER 

Mr. KAUTTER. Chairman Graves, thank you very much. Ranking Member Vela ́zquez and members of the Committee, thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today. My name is David Kautter, and 

I am the managing director of the Kogod Tax Center located at 

American University. The Kogod Tax Center is a tax research institute dedicated to nonpartisan research on tax matters affecting 

small businesses, entrepreneurs, and middle income tax payers. 

I have been a tax practitioner for over 40 years. As the chairman 

mentioned, prior to joining the Kogod Tax Center, I was director 

of National Tax for Ernst & Young. Over the course of my career, 

I have watched with great disappointment as the Internal Revenue 

Code has grown increasingly complex in its structure, incomprehensible in its nature, and pervasive in its effect on business decision-making. There is little doubt that the nearly paralyzing complexity, overwhelming length and constantly changing nature of 

our federal tax laws are having a profound effect on small business 

decision-making and impeding their ability to grow and create jobs. 

Based on surveys we have conducted over the past three years, 

discussions with small business owners and personal experience as 

a tax account, it is clear to me that the two biggest tax problems 

facing small business today are one, complexity, and two, the constantly changing nature of the tax law. These two forces show up 

in many ways, but there are seven particularly critical problems 

they are creating for small businesses today. 

First and foremost, most small businesses have given up trying 

to understand the tax law, and they have outsourced their tax 

planning and their compliance. It is estimated that close to 91 percent of small all businesses hire a tax return preparer at a cost of 

around $16 billion a year. 

Second, because the tax laws changes so often, small businesses 

are making decisions without full knowledge of their economic consequences. According to our surveys, the single-most important 

area of tax uncertainty for small businesses involves that menSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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tioned by Ranking Member Vela ́zquez, how much equipment can be 

immediately deducted, and what has to be depreciated. These rules 

need to be settled. 

Third, constantly changing tax laws mean constantly changing 

tax filing requirements, which means constantly changing recordkeeping requirements, which means constantly growing uncertainty, inefficiency, and frustration. The number one factor cited in 

Kogod Tax Center surveys that is contributing most to increased 

cost is the constantly changing rules and regulations. 

Fourth, increasing tax recordkeeping, tax compliance, and tax reporting requirements are diverting increasing amounts of time 

away from operating and growing small businesses. Fifth, internal costs. Despite spending $16 billion a year on outside tax return preparation, it is estimated that annually small 

businesses spend more than 2.5 billion hours of their own time on 

federal tax matters. This is not a healthy state of affairs. 

Sixth, tax compliance is becoming a year-round activity, requiring more interaction with the IRS. Yet, many small business owners say it is difficult to get answers from the IRS and solving problems takes more time. 

Finally, there are several specific areas of the tax law that are 

particularly challenging for small businesses. The top six are the 

rules governing accounting methods, depreciation, inventory, employee independent contractor determinations, the healthcare law, 

and retirement plans. Simplification of these rules is critical. 

Given all this, I would like to put forward two proposals that will 

not solve all the problems of small business but they will help a 

lot when it comes to taxes. The first is called the simplified cash 

method. This proposal would allow businesses with up to $10 million in revenue to immediately deduct all amounts they spend to 

run their business. That would include amounts they spend for inventory, capital equipment, wages, materials, supplies, everything. 

You could think of it as a checkbook method of accounting because 

taxable income would be based on cash received and cash paid. No 

inventory rules. No depreciation rules. No capitalization rules. Just 

cash flow. It is simple and it could work. 

My second proposal is not so much as simplification proposal as 

an equity proposal. It makes little sense to me that corporations 

are taxed at 35 percent and small businesses are taxed at rates as 

high as 39.6 percent. My proposal is that all business income be 

taxed under a single business tax rate schedule, no matter whether 

it is earned by a sole proprietor, a partnership, or a multinational 

corporation. It could be a graduated rate scale, but I would propose 

that it be the same rate scale for all business income. This could 

be easily implemented because small businesses already report the 

information needed to compute tax on a unified business tax rate 

scale on their existing tax return. 

Mr. Chairman, that concludes my prepared remarks. Thank you 

for allowing me to testify today, and I would be delighted to answer 

any questions. 

Chairman GRAVES. Thank you very much. 

Our next witness is Tim Reynolds, who is the president of Tribute, Inc., in Hudson, Ohio. Prior to purchasing Tribute, Mr. Reynolds held several positions with British Petroleum and BP AmerSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

5 

ica. He is a first vice president of the National Small Business Association, and he is testifying today on its behalf. 

Thanks for being here, Mr. Reynolds. 

STATEMENT OF TIM REYNOLDS 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Good afternoon. I would like to thank Chairman Graves and Ranking Member Vela ́zquez, and the members of 

the Small Business Committee for inviting me to testify today. 

I am Tim Reynolds, owner and president of Tribute, Inc., a software company located in Hudson, Ohio. Our 38-employee company 

develops and markets software for industrial distributors. We provide a fully integrated distribution management system supporting 

virtually all of the distributors’ business system needs. 

I am proud to be here representing not only my own company, 

but also the National Small Business Association. NSBA is the nation’s first small business advocacy organization. NSBA is uniquely 

member driven and a staunchly nonpartisan organization. I serve 

as vice chair. 

I would like to focus my remarks this afternoon on two of the 

major themes that emerged from a recent survey of our members 

at NSBA—the need for consistency and the importance of predictability. 

Our 70,000 page tax code has become disorganized by its own 

complexity. This complexity has real world implications. Nearly one 

in three small businesses spend more than $10,000 per year on the 

administration of federal taxes. This is just the accounting fees and 

so on before they pay their tax liabilities. This money would be better spent toward hiring a new employee or growing the business. 

The tax code is a patchwork quilt of internally inconsistent and 

often conflicting measures and objectives. For example, as a software development company, Tribute spends a significant amount of 

time, money, and resources each year on research and development. As such, we are entitled to take advantage of the R&E tax 

credit, which can produce significant tax savings and allow innovative companies such as mine to increase their R&D efforts. However, because we are a sub S corporation, like the majority of small 

businesses, the income of the business passes through to my personal income taxes. I am almost always subject to the Alternative 

Minimum Tax. This effectively prevents my company from taking 

the R&E credit. 

Small businesses are often America’s greatest innovators, and 

yet the complicated tax code steps on its own foot in this area. 

Even if I wanted to take the R&E tax credit, I cannot because on 

December 31st of last year it expired, along with 55 other tax provisions commonly referred to as tax extenders. Seventy-three percent of our members report using one or more of these incentives. 

While most of these tax incentives have been extended several 

times in recent years, it often has been done retroactively and in 

a rushed manner, leaving many small businesses scratching their 

heads on how to plan for the upcoming year. By Congress continuing to further delay the extensions, it punishes our work, investment, risk-taking, and entrepreneurship. 

Another important example of this problem is the uncertainty 

around Section 179. 179 expensing is of vital importance for smallSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

6 

er firms, particularly those involved in more capital-intensive industries. More than one in three NSBA members take advantage 

of this break as it encourages small businesses to invest in new 

equipment by letting them expense much of the cost up front instead of depreciating it over time. 

For Tribute, it has its largest impact on my sales. The software 

we sell is typically my customers’ second largest investment behind 

only that of their inventory, and as such, it is eligible for the benefits allowed under Section 179. This deduction is often the difference between affordable and not, and our customers often plan 

several years in advance for this very significant purchase and implementation. The annual termination, change in limits, and delayed extensions of this and other tax extenders disrupts this planning, interferes with business efficiency improvements, and harms 

the economy, both for buyers and sellers of capital goods. 

In conclusion, the complexity, unpredictability, and inconsistency 

within the tax code poses a significant and increasing problem for 

small business. The ever-growing patchwork of credits, deductions, 

tax hikes, and sunset dates is a rollercoaster ride without the 

slightest indication of what is around the next corner. The tax code 

is unfair to small businesses, biased against savings and investment, and impossibly complex. We need a tax system dedicated to 

investment, savings, and small business growth. 

Again, I would like to thank Chairman Graves and Ranking 

Member Vela ́zquez, and the members of the Small Business Committee for the opportunity to speak today. I would be very happy 

to answer any questions that you have. 

Chairman GRAVES. Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. 

Our next witness is Rick Endres, who is the president of The 

Washington Network, Inc., in Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Endres 

founded his company in 1987 to design and implement computer 

network systems for small- and medium-sized businesses. He is 

testifying today on behalf of ASCII Group. 

Thanks for being here. 

STATEMENT OF RICK ENDRES 

Mr. ENDRES. Good afternoon, Chairman Graves, and Ranking 

Member Vela ́zquez, and distinguished members of the Committee. 

I am Rick Endres. I appear on behalf of my company, The Washington Network, Inc., and a member of the ASCII Group, which is 

the nation’s oldest community of small- and medium-sized IT companies. 

Thank you for holding this hearing on tax issues that face small 

business and gives me the opportunity to share my company’s experience with the tax code. This topic resonates with me because 

of the increasing complexity of the tax code and the difficulty we 

have in complying with it. These are challenges that we, small 

business owners, face on a regular basis. 

Now, my company, The Washington Network, is an IT consulting 

firm that installs and supports computer systems and computer 

networks, telephone systems in businesses throughout the Washington, D.C. area. And during our 27 years in business, we have 

provided IT technical support to hundreds of companies and employed dozens of people. Yet, I have found that the complexity of 

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the tax code has had a very negative effect on both my firm’s 

growth and my hiring ability. This is true even for areas of the 

code that were meant to stimulate job growth. Tax credits designed 

to help businesses like mine often go unused because of the time 

and cost required to take advantage of them. 

Now, I should point out that I am not a tax authority. I am not 

a CPA, nor do I wish to be. But I am sitting before you today just 

telling you a few tales from the frontlines of business, describing 

some of the skirmishes that I have had with the tax code. 

The first skirmish was with the Veterans Hire Tax Credit, which 

encourages us to hire unemployed veterans. That is a really worthy 

incentive; however, this little known credit takes a number of 

billable hours to comply with, and then if you do not file its Form 

8850 within 28 days of hiring the veteran, you are disqualified 

from the credit. Now, this unrealistic compliance timeframe makes 

pursuing the Veteran Hire credit really unworkable, and so we 

have to pass. Not that we would not hire veterans, but we would 

not take advantage of the credit. 

Now, the Small Employer Health Insurance Credit and its 10- 

page Form 8941, is my poster child for needless complexity. The 

amount of information that I have to assemble to even see if I qualify for this credit is mindboggling. In 2007, the IRS calculated over 

30 hours to comply with this credit. In tax year 2013, they said it 

would be less than 15 hours. Now, my accountant can do it in 10 

hours, but why would I pay him $1,500 for a $500 tax credit? Why 

not just say if you are a small business under 25 employees and 

the people you hire you supply health insurance for them, you give 

a 10 percent credit? That is easy to understand and the credit 

would help. But when you study the form, the pages and pages of 

complexity, you realize—the term Rube Goldberg comes to mind, 

which is a very complex machine that you put $1,500 into and $500 

comes out the bottom end. The only beneficiaries of this credit are 

the accountants. 

Now, if you are a sub-chapter S corporation, like my company is, 

the tax code does not allow keeping any retained earnings in the 

business, which can be used for rainy day or to fund future growth. 

This is a capital formation disincentive. It does not make any 

sense. There needs to be a portion of the K–1 that is not taxed at 

the highest rates. 

There are unintended consequences in the tax code that have a 

chilling effect on the number of employees that I will hire. Although our employee count has varied over time, we never planned 

to grow beyond 30 employees in an effort to stay under the regulatory and tax code radars. I know a number of companies have 

taken a great deal of time and money to split their companies in 

two to avoid head counts over 50. The money that they have spent 

to avoid these punitive thresholds adds nothing to these companies’ 

ability to improve their products or increase their competitiveness. 

So as you can see, because of the punitive tax code, I have to siphon off vital time and capital out of my company simply to comply. From my experience, if we had a simpler, less complicated tax 

code, it would allow an entrepreneur, such as myself, to invest 

more of my time, more of my resources into the company, to grow 

the business, and create more jobs. 

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8 

Thank you. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Yes. It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Donald 

Marron. Dr. Marron is the director of Economic Policy Initiatives 

at The Urban Institute. Since joining The Urban Institute as director of the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center, his work has focused 

on tax reform and America’s fiscal challenges. He has previously 

served as a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, acting director of the CBO, and executive director of 

Congress’s Joint Economic Committee. 

Welcome, Dr. Marron, and thank you for being here. 

STATEMENT OF DONALD MARRON 

Mr. MARRON. Thank you so much. Hi, everybody. Chairman 

Graves, Ranking Member Vela ́zquez, members of the Committee. 

Thank you for inviting me to appear today to discuss the tax challenges facing small business. 

America’s tax system is needlessly complex, economically harmful, and often unfair. Despite recent revenue gains, it likely will not 

raise enough money to pay the government’s future bills. The time 

is thus ripe for wholesale tax reform. Such reform could have farreaching effects, including on small businesses. To help you think 

about those effects, I would like to make seven points about the tax 

issues facing small business. 

First, as everyone on the panel here has mentioned, tax compliance places a large burden on small businesses, both in the aggregate and relative to large ones. The IRS estimates that businesses 

with less than $1 million in revenue bear almost two-thirds of business compliance costs and compliance costs are much larger relative to revenues or assets or any measure of firm size for small 

firms and for big ones. 

Second, small businesses are also more likely to underpay their 

taxes. Because they often deal in cash and engage in transactions 

that are not reported to the IRS, small businesses can understate 

their revenues and overstate their expenses, and thus underpay 

their taxes. Some underpayment is inadvertent, reflecting the difficulty of complying with our complex and ever-changing tax code, 

and some is intentional. High compliance costs disadvantage responsible small businesses, while the greater opportunity to underpay taxes advantages less responsible ones. 

Third, as also mentioned here, the current tax code offers small 

businesses several advantages over larger ones. Provisions such as 

Section 179 expensing, cash accounting, graduated corporate tax 

rates, and special capital gains tax benefits benefit businesses that 

are small in terms of investment income or assets. 

Fourth, several of those advantages expired at the end of last 

year, and thus are part of the current tax extenders debate. These 

provisions include expanded eligibility for Section 179 expensing 

and larger capital gains exclusions for investments and qualifying 

small businesses. Allowing these provisions to expire and then 

retroactively resuscitating them is a terrible way to make tax policy. If Congress believes these provisions are beneficial, they should 

be in place well before the start of the year so businesses can make 

investment and funding decisions without needless uncertainty. 

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Fifth, many small businesses also benefit from the opportunity to 

organize as pass-through entities such as S corporations, limited liability companies, partnerships, and sole proprietorships. These 

structures all avoid the double taxation that applies to income 

earned by C corporations. Some large businesses adopt these forms 

as well, and account for a substantial fraction of pass-through economic activity. Policymakers should therefore take care not to assume that all pass-throughs are small businesses. 

Sixth, tax reform could recalibrate the tradeoff between structuring as a pass-through or as a C corporation. Many policymakers 

and analysts have proposed revenue neutral business reforms that 

would lower the corporate tax rate while reducing tax breaks. Such 

reforms would likely favor C corporations over pass-throughs since 

all companies could lose tax benefits while only C corporations 

would benefit from the lower corporate tax rate. 

Finally, tax reform could shift the relative tax burden of small 

and large businesses. Some tax reforms would reduce or eliminate 

tax benefits aimed at small businesses, such as graduated corporate rates. Other reforms, for example, lengthening depreciation 

and amortization schedules for investments or advertising but allowing safe harbors for small amounts, would increase the relative 

advantages that small businesses enjoy. The net effect of tax reform will thus depend on the details and may vary among businesses of different sizes, industries, and organizational forms. It 

also depends on the degree to which lawmakers use reform, a much 

needed opportunity to reduce compliance burdens on small businesses. 

Thank you. I look forward to your questions. 

Chairman GRAVES. Thank you all very much. We are going to 

start questions with Mr. Hanna. 

Mr. HANNA. Mr. Marron, you mentioned vaguely the underground economy. Has anyone here done any measurements on 

what that might look like knowing that complexity cost associated 

with complying, all of the things are a very direct incentive for people to run their businesses under the radar as much as possible? 

I am curious. There are other countries around the world that 

have huge problems with underground economies, and yet they still 

have lower rates than us. Maybe, Mr. Marron, you could talk about 

that a little bit, or anyone. 

Mr. MARRON. Certainly. I would be happy to take first crack. 

The IRS periodically does studies where it tries to estimate the 

size of the tax gap, and one of the things that they try to include 

in that is the informal economy. If you think about it, the informal 

economy in broad strokes has two pieces to it. One is otherwise legitimate activities that people may do on a cash basis in order to 

avoid taxes. A canonical example would be a contractor that you 

pay in cash rather than having anything that is traceable, but then 

also caught up in that are things that are the illegal parts of the 

economy. And, obviously, one would I think feel about them quite 

differently from the legal parts. 

Other nations face similar problems. As you say, they often have 

lower rates. In part that is because we, as a nation, focus quite 

heavily on income taxes as a basis for our overall tax system, while 

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many other nations have things like value-added taxes. They raise 

some different compliance issues, but often allow them to have—— 

Mr. HANNA. Do the value-added taxes tend to be more efficient 

and more collectible, if you will? 

Mr. MARRON. So value-added taxes tend to be a more efficient 

way of raising tax revenue, and I think that is one of the reasons 

why you see nations that have larger governments tend to rely on 

them for a significant portion of revenues. 

Mr. HANNA. Because it is harder to escape. 

Do you have an estimate on the size? What is the last estimate 

you saw by anyone on the size of the underground economy? The 

reason I ask that is there is a lot of class conversation about, you 

know, who makes a lot of money and how much they should pay. 

And I am not weighing in there for the moment, but there is also 

the possibility there are a great many people who should pay something who are paying nothing. And that is equally unfair. And I 

know we are making the problem worse, but the burden falls on 

the people that are in your businesses. 

I was in business for 30 years. I worked, strived to be legitimate, 

paid everything I had to pay legally. And there is within that, I 

would say personally, you begin to have a certain resentment when 

you look around you and so many people are working in cash and 

employees are working under the table and that kind of thing. And 

you see it growing because we are actually incentivizing it. 

Does anybody want to talk about that? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Congressman, I will respond to that briefly. 

At one point I tried to find any data on how much noncompliance 

is intentional, how much is unintentional. It does not exist. I think 

a lot of the mistakes that are made, the tax gap, are people that 

genuinely want to comply but cannot figure it out. And second, the 

Taxpayer Advocate Service recently did a study on small business 

and underpayment of taxes, and one of the critical factors that the 

Taxpayer Advocate Office found is norms; that different parts of 

the country have different cultures. And when you get a small business culture where folks are complying, other small businesses 

tend to comply. 

Mr. HANNA. Sure. It looks like, too, that people whose W–2s are 

reportable and they cannot avoid it, I mean, they are really the victims in this. I know as a business guy you have opportunities with 

depreciation and all the things we talked about to kind of move 

things around legally. But yet the people, like a school teacher or 

someone who works in any job, right, they have none of those capacities. Well, that is right. They are not breaking the law; that is 

a good thing. But it is not just unfair to upper class and middle 

class people; it is unfair to reporters, and to people who report and 

have no choice. And I wonder if anecdotally you hear what I do on 

the ground and people are just sick of it. 

Mr. KAUTTER. I do hear that frankly a lot at the Tax Center, 

and when it comes to information reporting, the percentage of 

wages that are reported is over 99 percent because the IRS gets a 

W–2, usually gets it electronically. 

Mr. HANNA. Or 1099 or whatever. 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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Mr. KAUTTER. And the 1099 is very high as well. It is in the 

90s. It is the transactions that are not reported that tend to create 

the gap. 

Mr. HANNA. So yes or no. I am going to run out of time. Have 

you had a chance to look at the Ways and Means, Mr. Camp’s proposals? It is a great attempt at kind of cleaning out a lot of things. 

It is a starting point; right? 

Mr. KAUTTER. I would say that it is. It broadens the base and 

lowers the rate. It is not simple. It is not simple. 

Mr. HANNA. Not as simple as what you talked about when you 

opened up. 

Thank you. My time is expired. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Dr. Marron, there has been a movement away 

from organizing C corporations in favor of pass-through entities. 

Today, corporate tax revenue makes up less than 10 percent of our 

federal revenue. What is it about pass-through entities that make 

them such an attractive business structure? 

Mr. MARRON. Oh, wow. I suppose I should lead off by saying 

that I think in my time I, myself, have formed three of them. And 

one thing that is very attractive about them is just how easy it is 

relative to other forms, in particular for myself setting up an LLC. 

You know, there is some paperwork involved, but relative to the 

standards of setting up a C corp or something it is very simple. You 

can get in business quickly. 

And another major thing is the tax treatment. The ability to be 

structure as a pass-through, pay the taxes on your individual income tax, and thereby avoid the double taxation of the corporate 

tax is very attractive and very beneficial for small businesses. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. 

Mr. Kautter, it is pretty hard to argue, and I made the statement 

in my opening statement, that the system is not just overwhelmingly complex. One of the main problems for businesses is deciding 

which tax structure offers the most advantages. Do you believe 

businesses simply have too many tax options on the table which 

make tax law more complicated? 

Mr. KAUTTER. You know, that is a good question, Congresswoman. And I think the law is complicated by the range of options 

that are available. Now, those options have grown out of more illegal concern on how to protect assets and do it flexibly, but for tax 

purposes, we do not have to recognize if we did not want to all 

those different structures. We could come up with some basic ways 

in which any form of business would be taxed, and that could simplify things. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Okay. So one of the distinguishing features of 

our system is affording businesses to option to choose how to organize themselves based on what best suits their capital requirements and their management needs. Why is it that this flexibility 

is so important to the health of the U.S. economy? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Well, I think that from a legal point of view, 

being able to structure your affairs in an efficient manner is very 

important. The tax consequences become part of that equation. And 

the ability to avoid two levels of tax is absolutely critical in most 

discussions when it comes to small business. The idea of operating 

a corporation, having to worry about the C corporation rules, diviSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

12 

dends, two levels of tax, it is just impractical. Very, very few small 

businesses. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. You, yourself, you are one of the proponents 

of suggesting moving to an integrated tax system. Would you explain how such a system will work? And in transitioning to such 

a system, will we add more complexity? 

Mr. KAUTTER. I think the greatest single thing that can be 

done for simplicity for small business is a simple cash method of 

accounting. And I think you can institute that without integrating 

corporate and individual taxes. 

My second proposal is that no matter which business form a 

business decides to use, maybe we should just have a single tax 

rate schedule for all business—sole proprietors, partners, corporations. It is one business rate schedule, and so you do not have corporate income taxed at 35 and income from a sole proprietorship 

taxed at 39.6. And it is easy because the information is already on 

the tax returns. Schedule C is sole proprietorships. Schedule E is 

S corporations. You just add them together. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. 

Mr. Reynolds, my last question. I have to go to the floor now. 

Experts agree that to make the U.S. more competitive we need 

to lower our corporate tax rate, and some have suggested a piecemeal approach to tax reform. However, I am hesitant to enact corporate-only reform because small businesses are so passionate 

about finally enacting tax reform. If corporate-only reform were the 

only option, would you consider it or would you insist on a comprehensive tax plan? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. For the vast majority of small businesses, including my own company, they are pass-through entities. And as 

was pointed out earlier, if you do just C corporation reform, what 

happens then is that a company such as mine loses the many tax 

incentives that would be struck during that reform, but then ends 

up not benefitting from the lower rates. As a result, we would be 

put at a disadvantage relative to larger corporations and frankly, 

small businesses have enough disadvantages. So it would be very 

difficult for us to support that. 

Ms. VELA ́ ZQUEZ. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Bentivolio. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Every year around this time it seems like my wife and I are 

spending a lot of time together going through receipts and documents and files and bank statements, credit card statements to put 

everything together so we can take it to the accountant. It seems 

to me it should be simpler and more fair. 

Just yesterday, coincidentally, a colleague of mine on the floor of 

Congress, we were talking about the variable added tax. A colleague from New York. 

Dr. Marron, you know, it was my understanding the VAT basically taxes every stage a product will go through. For example, 

from the farmer who buys the wool, to the sweater maker, to the 

retailer, and then to the consumer. There is a 20 percent or 10 percent, whatever that rate is is added. Is that right? Is that how it 

works? 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

13 

Mr. MARRON. It works like that but the tax only applies to the 

value-added added at each stage. So it is the incremental value 

along the way that gets that rate. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Okay. Now, according to my colleague, he 

said all we would have as far as taxes—we would eliminate gas 

tax, we would eliminate income tax, inheritance tax, all these other 

taxes—we would eliminate if we had a VAT. Is that right? 

Mr. MARRON. Obviously, sir, it depends what the VAT rate is, 

but most of the scenarios I have seen would have the VAT and the 

income tax continue in some form. You would continue to need 

multiple tax streams most likely. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Okay. 

Mr. MARRON. Except, unless we have a very, very large VAT. 

Mr. BENTIVOLIO. Okay. I think that is where I am going to 

stop and yield back. Thank you. 

Chairman GRAVES. Ms. Hahn? 

Ms. HAHN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Marron, I am glad we are having this hearing today. I think 

we can all agree that the tax code is excessively complicated. Small 

businesses with profits just high enough to keep them above water 

should not be spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours 

wading through a sea of paperwork. But a lot of the complications 

that we are talking about come from tax incentives aimed at 

incentivizing or assisting small businesses. 

So Dr. Marron, are there ways that we can simplify the tax code 

for small businesses that encourage tax compliance but do not 

eliminate the advantages that small businesses have built into the 

tax code? 

Mr. MARRON. Certainly. So I would like to second the call for 

expanding firms’ ability to use cash accounting; that if you have a 

relatively small business that does not have any reason to do fancy 

financial accounting because they do not have outside shareholders 

or whatnot, there is no reason to force them to think about the 

world a different way from the one in which they run their business, and cash accounting can let them just have simpler things, 

run it out of their bank account, fits much more naturally into the 

way they run their businesses and could eliminate a lot of the compliance issues that we face. 

Ms. HAHN. Thank you. 

Anybody else want to comment on that idea? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Well, I would, Congresswoman. 

I think one of the problems, having worked at one point in my 

career on Capitol Hill, one of the problems is when legislation is 

drafted, simplicity is never considered. Right? The whole goal is to 

just draft the provision the way the members want it, and nobody 

says is there a simpler way to do that? Similarly, when the IRS 

gets a hold of the project, their goal is to weave a net that is so 

finely knit that not one person could get through it. And it is like 

a fisherman who weaves their nets so tightly that when they push 

the boat out from shore the boat sinks. So I honestly believe you 

could get to the same point or close to the same point with a lot 

less complexity. 

And over the years I have done a number of studies in different 

parts of the code, and you can get 95 percent of the way there with 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

14 

probably 5 percent of the complexity. It is that last 5 percent that 

really creates the mind-numbing complexity that we see. 

Ms. HAHN. Yes, Mr. Reynolds? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. I guess what I would add, our survey, one of 

the things that showed up in our survey is that small businesses 

ranked the cost of compliance to the code as their number one issue 

with the tax code. Number two was the financial burden associated 

with the code. And I think what that clearly says is that simplicity 

is really the objective here. 

Ms. HAHN. I am going to follow up with you, Mr. Reynolds. 

The Harbor Maintenance Tax is something that we collect at our 

nation’s ports, and the point of it is it is to go back into keeping 

our ports and harbors maintained. And we have not done as good 

a job back here in Congress of actually appropriating that money 

for the purpose for which it was collected, which is one of my big 

fights back here. And I hope to one day convince my colleagues 

that we ought to be spending that tax for the purpose for which 

it was created, and in turn, that would be an investment in our infrastructure and the shipping companies that pay that tax would 

appreciate that because that means a lot to them that these ports 

are maintained and dredged so that they can come in and out of 

there efficiently. 

Consequently, have you ever found in your survey or anything 

there would be any better feeling about paying taxes for small businesses if they felt like some of the tax was going back to help promote the small business economy? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. I can only speak anecdotally. I do not think we 

have survey data on that, but I come from roughly the city of 

Cleveland, and I am very familiar with the Port Authority of Cleveland. That is a very important economic development organization 

within northeastern Ohio, and I think that from a small business 

perspective and an economic development perspective, there is no 

question that that would be a very positive thing if the money that 

was collected for the benefit of that port was able to be deployed 

by that port. 

Ms. HAHN. Right. But do you think small businesses would appreciate or would feel better about taxes—— 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Certainly. Yeah. 

Ms. HAHN.—if we devised a way to redirect some of those revenues to actually creating a better environment and economy for 

small business? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. It is always good to see the results of your contributions. 

Ms. HAHN. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Schweikert? 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have picked up bits and pieces as we have gone around, so I 

would actually like to go take one gigantic step backwards to sort 

of where the basis of the hearing was hopefully heading. 

What do you consider to be the optimal tax system for what you 

and I would define as a small business? And within that, I would 

like you to state the—share with me is it cash accounting? Is it 

cash accounting with the caps that are in sort of the Ways and 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

15 

Means proposal in regards to 179? What would be the optimal tax 

system to maximize efficiency, maximize compliance but also maximize small businesses doing what they are supposed to do, which 

is business? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Well, Congressman, what I would propose is 

what I call a simplified cash method of accounting. And when I say 

that, what I mean is inventory would be immediately deductible. 

Assets, capital assets purchased would be immediately deductible. 

Wages paid would be immediately deductible. You would not have 

to worry about the inventory rules, the depreciation rules. A lot of 

the complexity in the Internal Revenue—— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. But is that not almost just classic cash accounting? 

Mr. KAUTTER. It is exactly right. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. In the Camp proposal, is it not cash accounting, is it up to—— 

Mr. KAUTTER. Ten million dollars. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Ten million? 

Mr. KAUTTER. But what Congressman Camp does is while he 

raises the limit from five to 10, he makes no other changes in the 

cash method of accounting. 

So, for example, if you are a small business and you have inventory, you have got to use accrual. And so—— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. So you would make sure the cash accounting was for all categories? 

Mr. KAUTTER. It was real cash. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. 

Mr. Reynolds? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Well, first, I guess what I would like to tell you 

is our position with respect to Camp’s work, we are very appreciative at how inclusive he has been and how much input he has 

taken from all quarters in putting it together. We think it is a good 

start. 

In our written submission, you will see the NSBA has developed 

a set of nine principles around what we think an optimum tax system should be. I do not have a specific position on cash accounting. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. How about something like the 179 caps? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Our biggest issue with 179 is the unpredictability of it and how it has been expired and—— 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. But if it was permanent, you are comfortable though with the capital purchases of, what, 250,000? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Yeah, I am comfortable with it. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay, please. Yes, please. 

Mr. ENDRES. The SBA tells us we have something like, in their 

definition, 27 million small businesses. And I think of all those 

owners when they set foot into the business world, they had lots 

of dreams of what they wanted to accomplish—their business, their 

expertise, whatever they are leveraging off of. But having a head 

for accounting and these rules probably was the last thing they 

considered. And so the simplicity really cannot be overstated because you either make a real study of this and commit immense 

amount of resources or you just, as we have done, is just opt out 

to go right down the middle of the road, take advantage of virtually 

none of these things for fear of raising your spectra of compliance 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

16 

issues later, and you miss out on some opportunities but you can 

focus more on the business. So the simplicity and real world impact 

on companies cannot be overstated. I do not know what the measure or how you run it through a filter of real world considerations 

when legislation is proposed, but it has immense impact and has 

to be carefully considered. 

And then sunsetting a number of these rules that stack on top 

of rules and stack on top of rules, I do not know how you do that 

because it there is just never enough time or energy to do it. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. So those are the externalities even 

outside the tax system, now it is the enhanced regulatory system? 

Mr. ENDRES. It is described when the IRS gets involved and 

puts in their layers and tries to build in their protections, it becomes unworkable. It is understandable why they would do it, but 

that is why when we try these set asides, these cutouts, the law 

of unintended consequences kicks in and ultimately is a negative, 

I believe, in the aggregate. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. 

Doctor? 

Mr. MARRON. So the one thing I would add to that then is once 

we have this optimal small business tax system is to make it stable. Because if you think about it, for all these provisions, there is 

a learning curve in figuring out how to incorporate them in your 

business practices and your accounting practices and your tax paying practices, and that has an opportunity to become much more 

efficient and much less painful if it is the same rules from year to 

year. And if they change from every year it just adds significantly 

to the pain. 

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Okay. So sort of a tax stability, cash avoidance of accrual. Okay. 

And Mr. Chairman, I will throw you one other that is a little 

more ethereal to talk about is designing a tax system that also 

looks at the very aggressive changes in sort of what a small business is in the economy and the peer-to-peer economy, and the use 

of technology. Many things are microbusinesses with high rates of 

turnover because technology allows them to do that. And my fear 

is some of the caps, like in the 179, others creates some interesting 

distortions and change sort of the design of the business you would 

actually create. 

So with that, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your patience. I yield 

back. 

Chairman GRAVES. Ms. Chu? 

Ms. CHU. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. 

Dr. Marron, I agree that our tax code is complicated for small 

businesses to navigate, and I saw this firsthand as a member of the 

Board of Equalization in California, our country’s only elected tax 

board. And I saw many microbusinesses that were in trouble. Nine 

out of every 10 small businesses in this country is a microbusiness 

with five employees or less. And according to the U.S. Census, only 

one in three self-employed entrepreneurs earns more than $25,000 

per year from their business. 

Considering the fact that a tax reform bill could be some years 

away, I introduced the Entrepreneur Startup Growth Act to help 

ease the tax compliance burden on small businesses. It would esSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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tablish a self-employment tax initiative grant program at the Internal Revenue Service in consultation with the Small Business Administration to provide individuals with affordable tax preparation 

and business development assistance. Local organizations, higher 

education institutions, and local governments could run programs 

locally. 

What are you thoughts on this idea and other similar efforts to 

relieve the tax compliance burden on the microbusiness without 

having to reform our tax code? 

Mr. MARRON. So there seems to be a lot of evidence from the 

taxpayer advocate and other folks that if you have a sincere person 

who wants to comply with the tax code and they reach out to the 

IRS to get assistance, they find it frustrating and unproductive, 

and often unsuccessful, and sometimes get the wrong answer. And 

that is on top of just the challenges of complying with the tax code 

once you know what it is. So I think we have identified a very important issue, which is can you do things to help people to understand exactly what their requirements are and the easiest way for 

them to comply with them, and we are nowhere near best practices 

at that at the moment. 

Ms. CHU. I was thinking about the Small Business Development 

Centers. They are very valuable entities. Of course, one of the most 

effective programs of the Small Business Administration, and they 

allow small business owners to consult face-to-face with somebody 

who can help them with all kinds of assistance. What are your 

thoughts about using the SBDCs to provide tax preparation assistance to small business? 

Mr. MARRON. I will confess that I do not have a lot of familiarity with them. My apologies. 

Ms. CHU. Yes? 

Mr. ENDRES. Let me speak to that briefly. I have found the 

SBDC in our area to be inordinately helpful. They have not only 

helped our company but other companies they have helped they 

have sent to us and we have been a resource, too. But I would not 

look to them for any tax support or help because ultimately, we 

have got to turn to the IRS. And many times we have an expression in our accounting circles when working that it is often dealing 

like with a snowflake at the IRS; you get a different answer every 

time. 

We just went through an audit where they were looking at the 

issues of what is a contractor? And we had someone who worked 

for five other companies and was a contractor for those five, but it 

was a 1099 but still ruled that person to be an employee because 

we wrote our check directly; she did not bill us directly. That one 

out of the eight criteria the IRS decided that was still an employee. 

And yet, I could not get the SBDC to give me guidance. I should 

not look to them. It is hard enough for the IRS. And now with their 

overload, getting answers out of them or doing an amended return 

could take months to get it back. They are so overwhelmed. It is 

difficult to figure how we can do anything without just simplifying 

and making it simpler for everyone. Complexity is just ruining the 

process. 

Ms. CHU. Well, let me ask for anybody on the panel, each of you 

expressed the need for broad tax reform, the Section 179, expensing 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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cash accounting and various recommendations for rate reduction. 

But since it may take time for that to occur, perhaps even years, 

what do you think would be the most important thing to do in the 

short term? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Well, Congresswoman, I think the single, most 

important thing that can be done without broad tax reform is to 

simplify the cash method of accounting. There are too many businesses that get forced onto the accrual method. 

And with respect to getting taxpayers’ help, if I can go back to 

that for a second, I was with one of the big accounting firms, and 

I used to say at the end of the day that if the IRS audited every 

piece of advice we gave nationwide, we would be broke. But that 

assumes the IRS could figure out the answer as well. And they cannot. And so I think the real core, you have got to go back. Just do 

some things that would make it very simple for small business because the complexity in the Internal Revenue Code comes from trying to compute taxable income. And if you make that simple, you 

make a lot of progress. 

Thank you. 

Mr. REYNOLDS. I would say recognizing the possibility that the 

tax reform is on the horizon somewhere. The thing you can do most 

is not change much for a while, just to give us a period of stability 

and predictability so that we can adjust our businesses and be able 

to plan in advance would be a big help. 

Ms. CHU. Okay. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Collins? 

Mr. COLLINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for coming. I agree. Fundamental tax reform is the 

one thing that I believe can get this economy moving again. 

I own a number of small businesses, and just so you know, I do 

my own taxes. I have read the tax code. I know it inside out. My 

tax return was 69 pages. I have eight sub Ss and four LLCs in all 

types of industries. So I do know, and we will talk about cash accounting in a second. 

First of all, the one thing that hits me when I do this is every 

dollar I send to the government is a dollar I cannot invest in my 

business. So those who say on the other side let us just tax corporations more—tax, tax, tax—every dollar I send to D.C. to be 

wasted is a dollar I do not reinvest in my business to grow and create jobs. That is the fundamental thing. 

The other rhetorical comment I will make is it is insanity that 

we are taxes all my companies and small businesses at 39.6 percent, but it is more than 39.6 percent. I need to remind the folks 

on the other side. Under the tax code this year, I lost every exemption. I get no personal exemptions, no family exemptions, and because this income is flowing through my personal tax return, I lost 

20 percent—no, 80 percent of my itemized deductions. With the 

complicated tax return I have of 69 pages, I took the standard deduction because I lost 80 percent of my itemized deductions. So my 

tax rate is not 39.6. It is 39.6 plus what happened with the loss 

of exemptions, every one, zero, and losing 80 percent of my 

itemized deductions. That is how crazy the tax code is and how it 

disincentivizes or penalizes us. We cannot invest in our business. 

So that is my rant. 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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But by doing my own taxes, a couple of questions. First of all, 

and I am assuming you all agree—you can give me a quick yes or 

no. It does not make sense to do sub S and LLCs at 39.6 and big 

corporations at 35. Do you agree? 

Mr. MARRON. It is complicated. 

Mr. COLLINS. I kind of asked for a yes or no. 

Well, let me ask you a yes or no. Let me ask you. Are we not 

the only country in the United States—in the world without a 

VAT? 

Mr. MARRON. Only significant country, yes. 

Mr. COLLINS. In fact, the only three that are not are African 

countries that do not have a GDP? I mean, every developed country, every industrialized country has a VAT? 

Mr. MARRON. Except us. Yes. 

Mr. COLLINS. And if there was a country that could completely 

replace their taxes, income taxes with a VAT, would it not be the 

country where we are 4 percent of the world’s population and 25 

percent of the world’s GDP? Is it not the one scenario where it 

could work? Four in 25. 

Mr. MARRON. So I have not seen a VAT proposal that would do 

that. 

Mr. COLLINS. But would you not agree we are the one country 

that could at four and 25? You cannot do it—if you are 2 percent 

of the world’s population and 1 percent of the world’s GDP—if you 

are China you could never do something like that. Four in 25, that 

math is staggering, which makes you wonder how it is we are not 

churning money left and right. Maybe you do not like yes or nos. 

But anyhow, let us move on. 

Mr. MARRON. The curse of being in think tanks. 

Mr. COLLINS. The deductibility, one thing I have noticed is you 

cannot offset passive losses unless you have passive income. And 

a lot of companies generate what you could call passive losses or 

R&D tax credits, and an investor and owner cannot take credit. 

Would you suggest eliminating that requirement? That is something simple we could do to say the requirement that you have to 

have passive income to offset passive losses? It makes no sense to 

me. 

Mr. KAUTTER. It is something simple that could be done. In 

fact, it was put in the law in 1986 to raise revenue. At the time 

it was enacted, it really departed from the concept of tax expenditures because it says we understand you have got a loss; we are 

just not going to let you claim it. 

Mr. COLLINS. And if you cannot claim it, then you are paying 

higher taxes and you cannot reinvest the money in your business? 

Mr. KAUTTER. And you have got a loss. You have got a real 

loss. 

Mr. COLLINS. That is right. And you cannot use it. 

Mr. KAUTTER. Yeah. 

Mr. COLLINS. All right. So cash accounting. Be careful. I mean, 

because here is the nuance there. If I am a small business and I 

use cash accounting and I write off my equipment, if I write off my 

inventory and I have got a contract that is going to cross the year, 

so I just had a huge write-off because the inventory is in my shop. 

I am not going to bill it until next year. I am not going to get paid 

SBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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until next year. And I have a huge loss. And there are restrictions 

on how—so I have no income. So if I have no income, I do not take 

advantage of any of the marginal brackets. None of them. 

So now I go to the next year. I ship this thing out. I make all 

this money. And again, depending on how your carry-forwards 

work, you could find yourself you lost those marginal brackets forever. Now you go into 39–6. You lose all your exemptions. You lose 

80 percent of your deductions. I could see where cash accounting 

would not be good. 

Mr. KAUTTER. And I think, Congressman, what you are describing is why you would not want to manipulate your income particularly from one year to another. 

Mr. COLLINS. It is not manipulating to have a big contract. 

Mr. KAUTTER. I understand that. But if you want to take advantage of the brackets, you would have to make sure that you did 

not spend every year trying to zero out your income. And that is 

what people get concerned about in the cash method is somebody 

at the end of the year—— 

Mr. COLLINS. You cannot change when your customer needs the 

product, and if you are shipping it in January and you are building 

it in December, I mean, that is not manipulation. That is just 

called it takes me two months to build it so my inventory cost is 

in December, my revenue is in January. That person loses all the 

benefit of their marginal brackets. 

Mr. KAUTTER. They do. 

Mr. COLLINS. Thank you, guys. I could go on and on, by the 

way. 

Mr. KAUTTER. I am impressed. And you are forcing me to reconsider my line. Since 81 percent of small businesses tend to hire 

tax preparers, another 10 percent use both software and a tax preparer, the other 9 percent of the returns are completely wrong. So 

I have got to amend that now that you are doing your own return. 

Mr. COLLINS. And I do not use software either. 

Mr. KAUTTER. I am impressed. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Schrader? 

Mr. SCHRADER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am proud I do not do my own tax returns. I have better things 

to do. 

I guess a question generally. I do not know if it is possible for 

you to answer, but the discussion on the value-added tax is interesting. The comments by my colleagues I think are on point. So 

what would be the rate that you would have to have for a VAT to 

completely replace all business taxes, both corporate and sub S, 

LLC, partnerships, all that? What would that rate have to be? 

Mr. Marron, do you have any clue? 

Mr. MARRON. I hesitate to make up a number on the fly, but 

I suspect it would be a two-digit number beginning with a one. 

Mr. SCHRADER. Okay. Mr. Endres? 

Mr. ENDRES. Well, one of the points of the VAT tax is not what 

it is, what it is going to become because it is hidden and moves 

below public awareness many times. But what I do like about anything that is somewhat consumption based is this vast underground economy that pays zero taxes. And when you consume and 

you buy whatever you buy, you are paying in. It has got to have 

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some unbelievable effect of broadening the tax base to get the consumption. But the slippery slope of VAT taxation, I understand the 

arguments against it, but there has got to be something. In our life, 

in our business, I just see if you are a business, you either have 

to play by the rules or you do not at all. Just consumers or business, there are wonderful ways of just living under the radar and 

paying nothing. And it is a travesty. It is a very expensive one. 

Mr. SCHRADER. To your point, the Oregon Department of Revenue, when I was in the state legislature, did some work and was 

able to model with some sort of consumption tax, how much revenue reducing income tax is dramatic, corporate included, capital 

gains, how much money they were able to gain from that underground economy. It was pretty staggering actually to your point. 

Second, a follow up then would be what business types would object to that? It would not matter if everyone was treated the same, 

I assume. So what businesses, however, might object because they 

end up paying a little bit more under VAT than their current 

forms? What businesses would object to that, particularly small 

businesses? 

Mr. Kautter? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Well, the thought that comes across my mind is 

it would depend on the amount of effort to comply. If the forms 

were relatively straightforward then I think most small businesses 

could handle it. But if it got complicated they would not. 

The other point I would make on the value-added tax, and I am 

sure Mr. Marron is more knowledgeable about this than me, but 

I think many countries that have implemented a value-added tax 

still maintain an income tax. And so—— 

Mr. SCHRADER. Well, I was talking with regard to businesses. 

Mr. KAUTTER. I know. 

Mr. SCHRADER. These businesses, to simplify that, make it 

straightforward, avoid the underground economy, everyone pay 

their fair share, if you will ostensibly. I just did not know. We pick 

winners and losers all the time here with different tax credits, deductions and stuff, and we are probably not the smartest group in 

the world to pick winners and losers, so it would be smart I think 

just to simplify things. And that is one. 

The other way to go about it is look at a set rate. Say you got 

rid of all the deductions. Say you got rid of every single deduction, 

tax credit. I know sometimes it is tough to tell if it is a deduction 

or a change in whatever practices. Say you got rid of all that. Is 

there an appetite in the small business world, big business world 

for that matter, business world in general or a set tax rate for all 

business income and avoid all this deduction, save a ton of money 

in compliance. Simplicity would be the name of the day. What 

would that rate end up being? 

Mr. Reynolds? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. I would say that there is some appetite for it. 

Our organization supports, for example, what is referred to as a 

fair tax, which is essentially that, a flat rate. Very simple. 

Mr. ENDRES. It has also become evident to me in my years in 

business that businesses really do not pay taxes. You know, it is 

all paid through the consumer and it is just passed on. It is an interesting discussion but we really do not. It is a flat deal. It affects 

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everybody equally. It is a little more fair than those who can play 

the tax system better, put more energy into that as opposed to 

growing the economy and growing jobs. Fair, simple. What is not 

to like? 

Mr. SCHRADER. Mr. Marron? 

Mr. MARRON. So a lot of folks have taken a crack at writing 

down tax reforms like that. So Bowles-Simpson, Domenici-Rivlin, 

other folks. In a room of well-meaning people who are not constrained by the political process too much, it looks like you can 

write down plans where you get down to about a 28 or 27 percent 

rate across both corporate income and individual income which 

then applies to pass-throughs. As we saw from Chairman Camp’s 

effort that if you try to do it in a way that faces more political constraints, you start ending up with rates that begin with threes and 

that have some of the preferences maintained. 

Mr. SCHRADER. Very helpful. Thank you, gentlemen. I yield 

back. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Luetkemeyer. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Collins, well done. I am impressed. I was in the banking 

business for about 35 years. I did our bank’s taxes myself for about 

25 years and I finally got to the point that this is not going to work 

very much longer. But just so you do not fulfill the old adage about 

the lawyer who has himself for a client. 

Gentlemen, thank you for being here today. Yesterday I had in 

my office a gentleman who has a string of Taco Bells, I think 25 

of them as a matter of fact, and he was talking about the definition 

of full-time employee and how that is impacting his business from 

the standpoint of what goes on with the Affordable Healthcare Act 

and how he manages the rest of his employees and other things. 

And of course, the Affordable Healthcare Act has been deemed a 

tax by the Supreme Court in their enlightened wisdom. And so I 

was just kind of curious as to your thoughts about that, the impact 

of the tax implications that you see, positive, minus. I know it was 

something that was top of mind to this gentleman. 

Mr. Reynolds, I know you are a small business guy. What would 

be your comments? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Speaking just from my own small business, I 

have 38 full-time employees. We are in the software business, and 

that, for us, has not been a specific issue associated with it. It does 

have significant impacts speaking from an SBA’s perspective. It 

has very significant impact particularly on businesses that are in 

retail and food service which are perhaps not the majority but a 

very large segment of small business. And to have to be forced to 

rearrange your workforce in order to deal with that is suboptimizing the business and hurting the economy. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. One of his concerns was he had a group 

of employees that were in the management area and then he had 

another group that was in basically the 28 to 34 hour per week 

range that were very important to him. They were the supervisors. 

They were the shift supervisors, the folk who made sure the rest 

of the folk did their job. They were the ones who were teaching the 

ones who were in the 12 to 25 hour range, and it was very important. And now this group of people he relies on to actually manage 

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his operations so to speak of his business were going to have to be 

tinkered with their hours and it is really made a hardship on him. 

Any of you other folks on the panel have a comment with regards 

to that? 

Mr. ENDRES. Over the last 15 years, we have paid 100 percent 

of our employees’ health insurance and probably had too many 

bells and whistles going back to the dot-com era. But we have our 

insurance firm, just through having to—just the way things are 

structured and being able to—they have explained to us that they 

have had to raise our rates 40 percent just because of the fact of 

the other obligations they have to now hit. That hits us where we 

have to start scaling back what we were once doing at 100 percent 

and dropping off many of the dental, the vision, all the things that 

we had before. We are not big enough to be hit, and we do not have 

the part-time labor issues, but that was one practical impact on our 

company. 

Mr. KAUTTER. And I would say Mr. Endres’s comments are 

similar to comments we are getting at the Tax Center. Small businesses, many of whom had traditionally paid 100 percent of the 

healthcare costs are dropping the programs. They are going to raise 

the compensation, which will be taxable to the employees, send the 

employees to the Exchange, and just get out of the business of providing healthcare. It has gotten too expensive and too complicated, 

even though technically the Affordable Care Act does not apply to 

employers with under 50 employees. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Another quick question for you. It is kind 

of interesting. The SBA has a definition of small business as anybody 499, basically less than 500 employees, yet the healthcare 

law, their definition is under 50. Where do you see this playing 

out? Is this a problem? There is no consistency here. Anybody have 

any comments on that? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. There are dozens of definitions of small business sprinkled throughout the law, not only the Affordable Care 

Act but the law in general. For NSBA, I would say that while that 

is our definition, in terms of our membership, well over 90 percent 

I think are under 50 employees. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Would you support something, for instance, that changed to the healthcare law that would raise it to 

500 so that it would be consistent with everything else? 

Mr. REYNOLDS. I am not sure I can answer that knowledgably 

at this point. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. Okay. 

Mr. REYNOLDS. But I can certainly get back to you on it. 

Mr. LUETKEMEYER. I see my time is expired. I will yield back. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Schneider? 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to 

the witnesses for being here. 

Professor Kautter, like you, I started my career at 

PriceWaterhouse, not Ernst & Young, but I started on the consulting side. And after 30 years, or almost 30 years of working with 

clients, I understand one thing in business in strategy or in operations, complexity has associated costs. And I think it is the complexity of the tax code that leads us to an urgent need for comSBREP-219 with DISTILLER

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prehensive tax reform. But within that, I introduce a resolution, a 

bipartisan resolution calling for Congress, the House of Representatives, to make sure that we deal with both corporate and individual. Because 90 percent of our operating entities are these passthrough entities. 

If, however, Congress chooses to focus strictly on the corporate 

side and lower the rates in such a way to get to the point as the 

Camp proposal does of eliminating so many of the tax expenditures—so-called expenditures—and small companies have to move 

from their old structure, LLC, S corp, whatever, to a C corp, what 

is going to be the cost on those companies to do that? 

Mr. KAUTTER. Well, I think the restricting cost would be substantial and frankly, very frustrating. 

But, you know, Congressman, the proposal I talked about a little 

bit earlier of a single business tax rate schedule is designed to deal 

with this issue. In other words, if all you wanted to do was reform 

business taxes, right, and you did not want to worry about the 

mortgage interest deduction and state and local tax deductions and 

the phase-out of the personal exemptions, change the rules for all 

businesses with respect to depreciation, inventory, whatever you 

want, and then apply a single business rate schedule. So a sole proprietor would pull out of their individual return their Schedule C 

and subject that to tax at the business rate schedule, not at the individual rates. And that way you could get corporate business reform. Change all the business tax rules and tax all businesses at 

the same rate without having to work your way through the complexity and the difficulty of dealing with all the individual changes. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Any others? 

Dr. Marron, do you have thoughts on this issue? 

Mr. MARRON. I view it as politically unlikely because the bumper sticker will be so terrible of reducing taxes on multinationals 

and raising them on small businesses. But hypothetically, what you 

describe, which is that you would have higher tax burden on the 

pass-through entities. Some of them would choose to bear that and 

remain in the system as it is, and then some would bear the 

change cost as just described. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Mr. Endres, I will turn to you for a second. 

You talked about making the choice to stay below 30 employees because of the complexity of the tax code. If we had a more simple 

system that allowed you to grow your business, how big would you 

have grown? What would have been the impact over your business? 

Mr. ENDRES. Well, it is difficult to say that. It is more because 

of the uncertainty of the tax code and what the next rule is going 

to be and the next threshold. We have got limitations on the definition of a small business that sometimes it is 11 people, sometimes 

it is 22 or 30, 50. And so you never quite know what the rules will 

be. It is safest to stay around 30 and then outsource the rest, leverage off of other resources. Just be less people-intensive. And it is 

unfortunate because it has a real impact on hiring. And I think a 

lot of our tax law has built a huge offshore industry of offshoring 

a lot of jobs because of this concern. We do not have to use people 

in this country anymore with all the uncertainties and vagaries of 

how they are taxed. 

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Mr. SCHNEIDER. I am sorry; I am going to take back my time 

because we only have a minute. 

It is not just complexity, and Dr. Marron, you touched on this, 

it is certainty. It is the sense of every year it is going to change. 

If we could have certainty, let us say a five year confidence level 

of what the 179 deduction might be or what the R&D credit might 

or might not be, what impact would that have on our economy and 

the ability of small businesses to start making decisions, long-term 

decisions and investing in people or equipment and the things that 

will drive the economy? 

Mr. MARRON. If you think about those provisions, they do two 

things. One is they reward firms for undertaking those activities 

that we think are beneficial. And the other thing it does is actually 

provide like a carrot to think about, hey, you are going to get a reward if you do this. And they actually act as an incentive. And we 

are in this unfortunate world where there is uncertainty and they 

expire and whatnot that we are missing a chunk of the incentive 

effect. And it is sort of like an after-the-fact sweetener rather than 

something that firms can be confident will be there. 

But if we can go to your scenario, if we know it is in place for 

five years, then firms can put together investment plans and R&E 

plans over five years, recognizing that, putting it in their spreadsheets, and having it as an incentive for them to do more of it. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. I see I am out of time. My closing remark on 

that point is oftentimes if Congress waits until December, it is rewarding people for making decisions they would have made otherwise and not providing the incentive. So I think the importance to 

have it laid out is critical. 

Mr. REYNOLDS. Or in this case, April or May. 

Mr. SCHNEIDER. Right. With that, I yield back. Thank you. 

Chairman GRAVES. Mr. Payne? 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Endres, looking through your testimony, you mention that 

the deadline for the corporate tax returns should be extended beyond the current cutoff date of March 15 to add a few more additional months. Can you be a little more specific in terms of the 

timeframe you feel it would take to produce a quality corporate return? 

Mr. ENDRES. Well, our tax and financial data comes pouring in 

through January and into early February. We have a March 15th 

filing deadline. Our accountant needs three weeks to prepare the 

return. He has got a crush of every one of his clients have to be 

done all at the same time in three weeks. That gives us a window 

of about two weeks to work on it and get it cleaned up for our accountant. And so our business pretty much just stops while we attend to it. There are some years we have just skipped over and just 

let it fly and if we missed opportunities to deduct and we missed 

things, so be it. We are just too busy. We pay the taxes as they 

are due, but if we had several more months, I do not know, September 15th, taxes would still be paid on time but we would have 

the time to do a much higher quality return, working closer with 

our accountant when he has time to review the prior year’s fiscal 

data and do a better return. 

Mr. PAYNE. Anyone else like to take a stab at that? 

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Mr. KAUTTER. I do not know the statistics, Congressman, but 

there is a very high percentage of businesses that are not as diligent as Mr. Endres, and the automatic reaction is to file an extension. The problem with filing an extension is you have to pay your 

taxes or you pay penalties. So you pretty much have to have a good 

idea of what the tax liability is. So I would think if you could push 

the due date out another month to two months you would probably 

have something that is much more reasonable. 

Mr. PAYNE. Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back. 

Chairman GRAVES. Well, I want to thank all of our witnesses 

for being here today. Taxes have a profound effect on the operation 

of small businesses. Tax provisions very often drive the decisionmaking process when it comes to businesses purchasing, expansion, 

hiring, whatever the case may be. We are going to stay very engaged in this, the Small Business Committee is. It is an important 

issue to all members on the Committee. 

Again, I want to say thank you for coming out, some of you coming so far to be a part of this hearing. 

I would ask unanimous consent that members have five legislative days to submit statements and supporting materials for the 

record. 

Without objection, that is so ordered. 

The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:21 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

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A P P E N D I X 

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Introduction 

Good afternoon, Chairman Graves, Ranking Member Vela ́zquez, 

and distinguished members of the Committee. My name is Rick 

Endres, I appear on behalf of my company The Washington Network, Inc., and as a member of The ASCII Group, the nation’s oldest community of small and medium sized information technology 

(IT) solution providers. 

I want to thank Chairman Graves and Members of this Committee for holding this hearing on tax issues facing small business. 

The complexity of the tax code and the difficulty of complying with 

it are challenges that I face on a regular basis, and it is a challenge 

that affects my business, my fellow ASCII members, and millions 

of other small businesses across the country. 

Small businesses continue to be the largest job producers in the 

country. As you know, there are 28 million small businesses in the 

United States, and the small business community has provided 

millions of good-paying jobs for Americans at a time when big business continues to eliminate jobs. 

I would like to share with you my experiences on behalf of my 

company and The ASCII Group on the difficulties the tax code presents small businesses in terms of growing our companies and the 

effect it has on our ability to employ more people. 

About The ASCII Group 

The ASCII Group is a membership-based community of independent managed service providers, value added resellers, and 

other IT solution providers. Formed in 1984, ASCII brings together 

over 1,000 SMB IT integrators and these IT solution providers, located in every state of this country, provide integrated IT solutions 

for many thousands of businesses, educational and government entities, daily. ASCII provides its members educational information; 

group purchasing power; increased leverage in the marketplace; 

and multiple networking opportunities. 

ASCII provides several ways for SMB companies like The Washington Network to communicate with each other, and we have 

learned from talking to each other that we each share the daunting 

task of fully complying with the maze of federal, state and local tax 

laws. 

On a state level, members recently asked ASCII to contact each 

state tax division with nearly two dozen questions related to uncertainties about when they should be charging taxes for services provided to their clients. For companies like mine who do business in 

the DC area, that means incurring the cost of staying updated on 

various tax interpretations and laws in Virginia, Maryland, and 

the District of Columbia. On a federal level, the challenge is just 

as difficult because of uncertainties with the ever-changing tax 

code and the ever-increasing number of regulations. 

ASCII realized the marked effect the complex federal tax code 

has had on the success of its members and so became involved due 

to the efforts led by CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry 

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Association) through their TechVoice initiative. TechVoice raises 

awareness on Capitol Hill about issues such as the tax code facing 

the SMB IT community. Small business owners work an incredible 

amount of hours, and every hour and every dollar spent on trying 

to figure out how to comply with the tax code is time not spent on 

growing their business so they can hire more people. 

The Effects of a Complex Federal Tax Code 

Founded in 1987, my company, The Washington Network, is an 

IT consulting firm that supports the computer networks and telephone systems of Washington DC area businesses. During our 27 

years in business we have provided IT support to hundreds of companies and employed dozens of people. 

While I would consider my company to be a true example of a 

successful small business entrepreneur, I also consider myself to be 

the prototypical victim of an uneven tax code that is filled with uncertainty, vagueness and unintended consequences for me and 

other small IT companies. The complexity of the tax code has had 

a negative impact on both my business growth and my hiring capabilities. 

This is true even for areas of the code that were meant to stimulate job growth. Tax credits designed to help my business often go 

unused because of the complexity of learning how to take advantage of them. 

Seven Tax Burden Examples from the Front Lines of 

Small Business 

1 - Unworkable Compliance Time Frame 

The ‘‘Hire Veterans Tax Credit’’ encourages us to hire an unemployed veteran. A worthy incentive, however, this little known credit takes many billable hours to comply with; and if you don’t file 

Form 8850 within 28 days of hiring, you’re disqualified from the 

credit. 

You would think that you’d be able to file Form 8850 for the tax 

year—right? No—have to file within 28 days. While we still look 

to hire veterans we won’t be pursuing the credit. 

2 - Remarkable Complexity 

Filing the 10-page Form 8941 for Small Employer Health Insurance Credit is my ‘‘Poster Child’’ for needless complexity. The 

amount of information that I have to assemble to see if I even quality is mind-boggling. In 2007 the IRS calculated over 30 hours to 

comply. In 2013 they claim it can be done in less than 15 hours. 

My accountant can do it for me in under 10 hours. So why would 

I pay $1,500 to get a $500 credit? Why not just say—if you are a 

small business under 25 employees and supply health insurance for 

your employees we’ll give you a 10% credit. Why the Rube Goldberg complexity? The only beneficiaries are the accountants. Any 

wonder that many business-boosting credits don’t have their intended effect? 

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I think that Congress should consider tax preferences for small 

business but only to the extent that they are usable by real companies in real world situations and won’t require extraordinary effort 

to access them. 

3 - Instability of the Tax Code - Moving Targets 

I am making business investment decisions without having any 

knowledge of how ultimately the tax code is going to tax me or my 

clients. The Section 179 deduction is back down to $25,000... that 

a 1950s number. It needs to be expanded back to $500,000 and 

above all it should be made permanent. Today’s technologies 

change too rapidly for the current out-of-date depreciation schedules. 

4 - Capital Formation Disincentive 

If you are a Sub-Chapter S Corporation the tax code does not 

allow keeping some retained earnings in the business for a rainy 

day or to fund future growth. There needs to be a portion of the 

K–1 that is not taxed at the highest rates. 

5 - Unintended Consequences Limits Hiring 

The tax code has a chilling effect on the number of employees I 

will hire. Although our employee count has varied over time, we 

never plan to grow beyond 30 employees in an effort to stay under 

regulatory and tax code radars. While we make every effort to comply with the tax code, there are so many regulations and expenses 

involved in trying to comply with the code that we have turned 

down opportunities to grow due to the potential implications and 

the increased accounting and legal fees in determining what our 

new tax responsibilities would be under the code. 

6 - Many Definitions of Small Business in Federal Law 

Another area that would greatly help small businesses is the 

elimination of uncertainty that permeates the tax code. It’s extremely frustrating when even simple things like trying to determine whether I am considered to be a ‘small business’ can be confusing since the government has so many definitions of what a 

‘small business’ is. Depending on the law or regulation, a small 

business threshold is generally defined as anywhere from 11 employees to 50. The SBA definition is 499 employees and below. This 

uncertainty eats away at my profits as I spend money on legal and 

accounting fees to make sure I am in compliance with the law. I 

know a number of companies that have spent a great deal of money 

to split their companies in two to avoid head counts over 50. Those 

costs to avoid punitive thresholds add nothing to their ability to 

improve their products and increase their competitiveness. 

7 - Need Time to File a Quality Tax Return 

Finally, decreasing the amount of paperwork and being sensitive 

to the time/money factors that a small business faces would be very 

helpful. One change in the code that would help small businesses, 

for instance, is if there could be an extended deadline for annual 

returns. While taxes should obviously be paid on time, quality corporate returns often cannot be done by March 15th. Most data is 

pouring in until the first week in February and our accountant 

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needs a couple weeks to prepare along with the crush of all their 

other clients. So business stops for two or three weeks for many of 

us while we close our books and prepare for our filing. That deadline should be extended a few months to give small businesses and 

their accountants more time to prepare a higher quality return. 

Furthermore, the quarterly filing of payroll taxes doesn’t seem to 

have any practical utility and adds unnecessary filing costs. 

Conclusion 

So in conclusion, as a small business owner I am concerned that 

I will need to continue to divert more resources to make sure I 

comply with the ever-growing complexity of the tax code. I would 

ask the Committee to consider sensible changes that will allow me 

and other IT small business owners to focus more energy on company and job growth and less energy and dollars on figuring out 

how to make sure I conform with the code. 

Contact: RickEndres@WashingtonNetwork.com 

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The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) respectfully submits this official statement for the record on today’s hearing, ‘‘The Biggest Tax Problems for Small Businesses.’’ The NASE 

represents the 23 million self-employed and micro-business owners 

(10 employees or fewer), as well as providing educational resources 

for those looking to start and grow their businesses. Founded in 

1981, the association has been the leading voice advocating for 

America’s smallest businesses in all areas of public policy, especially in the area of tax inequities faced by the self-employed. 

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For background purposes, we would like to put into context the 

role of the self-employed in the larger small-business community. 

At present, there are roughly 27 million small businesses nationwide, ranging from 1 to 499 employees and of those, 23 million are 

identified as self-employed, accounting for more than 78 percent of 

the entire small-business community. These self-employed businesses generate roughly $950 million dollars annually in sales 

(2010 Non-Employer Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau). The majority 

of the self-employed, roughly 56 percent, have their business organized as a sole-proprietorship. Thus, any significant tax reform in 

the corporate area will have little if any impact on the self-employed. 

On behalf of our members, the NASE is strongly in favor of comprehensive tax reform. In a 2012 survey, 78 percent of our members, nationwide, voiced their overwhelming support for tax reform. 

So strong is the call for reform that in 2012, 96 percent of our 

members deemed individual and corporate tax reform as a ‘‘very 

important or moderately important’’ issue for Congress to address 

in 2013. Reform of the tax code is essential in order to create a 

simplified system that treats all businesses fairly by removing unnecessary hurdles and streamlining a cumbersome and overwhelming filing process. 

Yet lawmakers largely ignore the self-employed in proposed reforms. For the past several years the House Ways and Means Committee has undertaken a valiant effort to draft and propose significant tax reform. However, those efforts are seemingly void of any 

proposals that would address the continued disparity faced by the 

self-employed under the current tax code. In blunt terms, only one 

of the four components has any bearing on the self-employed community, the Unified Deduction for Start-Up and Organization Expenses. And it is ironic that the framework for the unified deduction is included in H.R. 886, Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2013, 

which also contains an additional six other tax measures that the 

small-business draft overlooks (Note: the small business draft does 

include the permanent expensing provision which is included in 

H.R. 866). 

The following are real, actionable tax reform recommendations 

that would have significant, positive impact on the self-employed: 

- Deduction of health insurance costs for the self-employed as a 

qualified business expense by adding a line item on the Schedule 

C form and not on page one of Form 1040. The biggest tax inequity 

faced by the self-employed continues to be their inability to deduct 

the cost of the health insurance as a qualified business expense. 

This amounts to roughly $1,800 in additional taxes per year for 

self-employed individuals. 

- Amend the definition of ‘‘employee’’ to include the owner 

and spouse of a sole proprietorship, or a 2 percent or greater 

shareholder in an S Corporation—a simple legislative or administrative fix to current language. This would address many 

issues related to ‘‘fringe benefits,’’ for example: the applicability of an HRA 105 plan, retirement plan contributions, and 

health insurance premiums. 

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- Simplified and streamlined definition of independent contractor versus employee by expanding the Form 1099 that requires the owner and contractor to agree to their business relationship in a transparent manner. Resulting in a reduction of 

abuse by business owners and their use of independent contractors. 

- Reforms to the Affordable Care Act that would make the 

purchase of health care coverage simpler and more cost effective for the self-employed. Two proposal: changing the premium assistance calculation from anticipated gross income to 

adjusted gross income from the previous year (utilizing safe 

harbor provisions that already excited for the self-employed by 

the IRS) and reversing the Technical Release No. 2013–03, 

‘‘Application of Market Reform and other Provisions of the Affordable Care Act to HRAs, Health FSAs, and Certain other 

Employer Healthcare Arrangements,’’ so that micro-business 

owners may utilize health reimbursement arrangements for 

help their employees cover related medical out-of-pocket expenses. 

It goes without saying that any significant reform to the tax code 

will be challenging, but we believe that putting forth a dynamic, 

common-sense proposal for bringing the tax code into the 21st Century can be accomplished. Any such proposal must provide for a 

transformational change to all aspects of the tax code, individual 

and corporate. 

As it stands now, the self-employed continue to face a significant 

inequity when it comes to adhering to the current dysfunctional 

and byzantine tax code. We believe it is time for Congress to act. 

We look forward to continuing to work with the Small Business 

Committee on removing the barriers to self-employment by making 

the tax code simpler, easier and more business friendly. 

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