Vice President Kamala Harris will propose a tax deduction of up to $50,000 for new small businesses on Wednesday, a tenfold increase over existing relief and her latest economic policy aimed at winning over middle-class Americans after jumping into the presidential race over a month ago.
Starting your own business should not be the best or only vehicle to prosperity. You should be able to make a comfortable living working a normal job that doesn’t break you.
Failure rate of small business is high, and you can’t blame all of that on lack of startup capital. Bad concept, bad execution, bad location, etc. could all play into it. The taxpayer should not be obliged to keep a “quirky” store running if it doesn’t bring in customers. Throwing good money after bad isn’t going to bring prosperity to anyone in the end.
Not to mention that they compete with each other, not just the megacorps. I’m pretty sure there are half a dozen hair salons on our main street alone, and most of them sit empty at any given time, endlessly changing hands. Incentivizing startups will only make competition more fierce, so a few more winners but much more losers.
We don’t need more restaurants giving the community more below minimum wage jobs that can’t be filled. We need that money helping everyone, with rent or groceries or something, so that they can actually have money to spend at the small businesses that exist.
You’re ignoring the fundamentals of economy by hand waving away all the other types of small businesses and only focusing on the most obvious targets to justify your argument. Construction, legal, retail, medical, mechanical, etc. all make a community even possible. And this benefit is a deduction, not a credit, so taxpayers aren’t directly paying anything for this benefit.
Look, I’m not disagreeing with you that everyone needs help. I completely agree. I’m also not going to defend all small businesses as being a good thing by default, because there are lots of shitty local places that pay and treat their staff awfully. But I think this is a simple win to allow average people to pursue their goals in business if they want to and make it just a little bit easier for them.
Fixing rent, grocery costs, healthcare, worker salaries, etc is far more complex than simply giving a tax deduction.