The tax burden on small businesses

According to an April 14, 2015, press release, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the average small business must devote 24 hours and pay more than $400 just to prepare and pay its federal taxes, not including the taxes themselves. “That cost is the result of the bewildering complexity in an IRS Code that has grown from 30,000 pages in 1986, the last time it was reformed, to more than 70,000 pages today,” said Dan Danner, president and CEO of the NFIB. “High tax rates are a burden on small business, and the cost of compliance gets bigger every year as the tax code gets more complicated.”

Approximately 75 percent of NFIB’s members pay their business taxes as individual filers, and few of these businesses have in-house accountants. As a result, they have two options. One is to hire professionals, which is costly. The other is to spend endless hours themselves preparing their taxes. “The tax code hampers their competitiveness,” said Danner. “Every dollar that they must send to Washington is a dollar they’re not investing in their business. And every minute it takes to prepare their taxes is a minute they’re falling behind on something else more important.”