THE SMALL BUSINESS BLOG

While I have been quiet annoyed with the current Labour government and it’s failure to understand small and micro business, it is nice to see that some parts of the political establishment, seem to have some sort of idea what small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer- or Personal business, like professional, contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants need.

In the US, the Office of Advocacy at the SBA-Small Business Administration, is listening to the authors of the Small Business Growth: Searching for Stylized Facts – in order to get a better understanding of the right business environment for small business in the US. Hardly surprising, with almost 27 million small businesses in the US, government pays attention – good for them.

Even in the UK, some are waking up to the fact that red-tape may be a problem for small business and may prevent entrepreneurs from starting new ventures. In this case Edward Leigh, the chairman of the PCA-Public Accounts Committee said:

“It is vitally important that new businesses get the assistance and simplified requirements they need so that, right from the start, they can get their tax affairs in order and are well-placed to continue to comply as their tax affairs become more complicated. Providing each business with a unique tax reference number would be an important step towards the department being able to have an overview, for each business, of all of its tax affairs.”

This follows from the fact that the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) operate a “ridiculous” registration process, whereby the same questions need to be answered to different parts of the HMRC.

So one both sides of the big pond, there are people still thinking about small business – good. With that in mind I will go into this weekend and hope against all hope that things could improve. Have a nice weekend. ST.

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