Theory vs. Reality
I’ve heard from my democratic friends on this blog as they’ve explained the reasons for some of the steps being taken today by our new administration and congress. They explain the theory behind steps that have been taken to ‘stimulate’ our economy and so forth.
As a business owner I’m not interested in theory…I’m interested in reality. So here’s some reality and it’s tied directly to incentives, or the lack thereof. I had a strong incentive years ago as I got started in my business. It was tied to survival. I had to do enough to put food on the table and keep the lights of my business on. I wasn’t worried about growth or taxes since everything we made went right back into the business and our expenses wiped out any profits. As we moved past the survival stage we looked to hire staff and focused on growth. In the first 3 years we grew from three people to eight. In the next four years we grew from eight people to more than forty.
I’ve been able to keep roughly half of my profits as we’ve grown, with the other half going to pay assorted taxes. Is that fair? It is compared to what’s coming in the next twenty months…as proposed by our government.
Last year our company employed almost fifty people and we collectively paid millions in taxes. What happens to these revenues for government when the tax burden reaches a point where our business has to choose between paying taxes or hiring/retaining staff…?
