Last week, the Senate Committee on Finance held a hearing to mark the first anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, featuring Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. There was quite a lot about the hearing that was completely predictable. Committee Democrats spent their time encouraging Secretary Sebelius to elaborate on the [...]

House Democrats are still fighting with the Republican majority over regulations and, specifically, over small businesses and regulations. That argument was very much on display during a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, the subject of which was the Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2011 (H.R. 527). The bill [...]

The Justice Department is in the early stages of crafting a new set of regulations on Web site accessibility standards, in order to bring the web into compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). And why, after more than 20 years, is the Justice Department suddenly talking about a new set of [...]

There’s some very good news for microbusinesses from Capitol Hill this week. The Senate has voted to repeal Section 9006 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In case you’re wondering what that might be, that is the section of the health care reform bill that would have required business tax filers to file [...]

Sometimes, when Democrats and Republicans decide to compete for the fictional title of “Best Friend To Small Business,” it can be fun to watch. The 112th Congress is beginning to take shape as the Regulatory Reform Congress — always assuming that the clearly expressed intentions from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, as well [...]

Earlier this month, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen released her Annual Report to Congress for FY 2010 and she has once again named tax code complexity as the most serious problem impacting taxpayers. The time for tax reform, according to the report, is right now. That is certainly something everybody in the small business community [...]

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olsen has issued her annual report to Congress, in which she is required to describe for policy makers the taxpayers’ major challenges for that particular fiscal year. Olsen adds her voice to the growing chorus of dismayed observers who express concern about the newly increased reporting requirements contained in the Patient [...]

It has been more than a year now since President Obama nominated Dr. Winslow Sargeant to be Chief Counsel of the SBA Office of Advocacy. Back then, his nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship was such a cordial affair that it’s difficult to believe there could be so much controversy [...]

There’s a problem. The problem is that there are some “unscrupulous” employers that take advantage of the desperation in the labor market to deliberately misclassify employees as independent contractors. That means that the employees involved probably are not properly filing IRS Schedule C, contributing to the tax gap, and law-abiding employers are (allegedly) at a [...]

Amidst all the jumping up and down and yelling about the health care reform bill that was signed into law earlier this year, very little attention was paid to an obscure provision about 1099s. But that obscure tax provision is expected to increased the tax compliance paperwork burden for microbusinesses by an absurd 1250%, according [...]