A Legislative Agenda to Startup America.
A Legislative Agenda to Startup America
Today, Startup America celebrates its first birthday, and President Obama is sending Congress a set of proposals to help boost the startups and small businesses that create so many jobs in this country.
President Obama has already cut taxes for businesses 17 times. Now, he’s asking lawmakers to create four new tax cuts. He’s proposing a new 10 percent income tax credit on new payroll for small businesses; a permanent extension of a tax cut he signed in 2010 that eliminates taxes on capital gains in key investments for small businesses; a doubling of the amount that entrepreneurs can deduct from their taxes for start-up expenses, and a 100 percent extension of first-year depreciation of qualified property for one year.
To help businesses find more investors, the President is calling for a national framework that allows entrepreneurs to raise money through “crowdfunding.” Currently, the most a small business can raise through a round of “Regulation A” mini-funding is $5 million — but President Obama wants to boost that limit to $50 million, coupled with strong protections for investors. He’s calling for changes in how securities laws and regulations are phased in for small companies in their first year after going public. And the President wants to increase the Small Business Investment Company program to to allow for up to $4 billion in annual support.
President Obama is also calling on Congress to relieve the backlog of immigrant visas. To do that, he wants lawmakers to eliminate the country-specific caps for certain immigrant visas to attract more high skilled foreign workers, particularly entrepreneurs.
By Matt Compton
Deputy Director of Online Content for the Office of Digital Strategy
To learn more about all these proposals, go here.
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Matt Compton
Deputy Director of Online Content for the Office of Digital Strategy
Matt Compton joined the White House in October of 2011 and currently serves as the Deputy Director of Online Content. Prior to this role, he was the Director of New Media Campaigns for the Democratic National Committee. Earlier, he worked as the Communications Director for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and as an editor for the Progressive Policy Institute.
A native of North Carolina, he’s a 2005 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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About Startup America.
Startup America is a White House initiative that was launched to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation.
Startups are engines of job creation. Entrepreneurs intent on growing their businesses create the lion’s share of new jobs, in every part of the country and in every industry. And it is entrepreneurs in clean energy, medicine, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and other innovative fields who will build the new industries of the 21st century, and solve some of our toughest global challenges.
>>> Learn more About Startup America <<<
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The White House
* The above story is adapted from materials provided by The White House
