The Wall St. Journal’s Opinion Forum has a misleading post about Obama’s tax plan and its affect on small business.  True enough, small businesses are usually taxed (as sub-chapter “s” or partnerships) based on the income of the owners of that business, not on the income of the business per se… and Obama’s plan to raise the marginal, Federal tax rate to the Clinton-era rates and to create a payroll tax surplus would affect owners of businesses whose income from that business and all other income exceeds $250,000.  But that’s not a direct tax to the business itself. 

I’ve owned a business for the past 16 years, and have paid all sorts of taxes based on the business income, since I have never run a general corporation but always an entity that relies on personal tax brackets to gauge the amount of tax I pay. (My own personal tax bete noire is the AMT, but that was never eliminated during the past eight years.)  And although my bottom line is extremely important, I rarely considered my personal tax bite when making a business decision, figuring that growth in my top line trumped any marginal tax consideration.

And, like many small businesses, mine did particularly well in the Clinton years.  An extra 4% of nothing is still nothing.