Speaker John Boehner has a sad for America's "small" businesses, like Starbucks.
So far, House Speaker John Boehner is still resisting the idea that the continued payroll tax cut for middle-class America should be paid for by the 1 percent. Actually, as it turns out, the proposed 3.25 percent tax on millionaires would be paid by about
one-tenth of the 1 percent, but that won't keep Boehner from bleating about "job creators." Which he's done in this case, with his spokesman
telling reporters that the idea is a "job-killing tax hike on small businesses."
Except, as Suzy Khimm explains, it's not.
The millionaire’s tax would indeed affect about 30 to 40 percent of business income that’s reported on individual tax returns, rather than on corporate tax returns. But that income is concentrated among a very small group of small businesses. The tax would only affect about 1 percent of those the Treasury Department classifies as "small business owners."
Just 2 percent of all business owners who file taxes through individual returns—including sole proprietorships, limited liability corporations, S corporations, and partnerships—have taxable income that’s more than $1 million, according to an August 2011 Treasury report. And just about 1 percent of those Treasury categorizes as "small businesses owners" would be affected by the Democrats' proposed millionaire's tax —about 273,000 in total. That number drops even further—to 51,000—if you define "small business owners" as those earning at least 25 percent of income through their firm.
Of course, it all depends on how you define "small business," and we know that Boehner's definition doesn't really correspond to reality as most of us know it, since he calls the world's largest coffee purveyor a small business.