The insurance companies are ripping off small businesses in every product they sell, because state and local governments, as well as some contracts require that a business have certain types of insurance. There is never a decrease if you don’t make any claims, but the rates go up on a regular basis.

Insurance companies can afford lobbyists, and small businesses can’t.

Then there’s Rip Daniels. He owns four businesses in Gulfport, Miss.: real estate ventures, a radio station and a boutique hotel/bistro. He said his problem wasn’t regulation.

“Absolutely, positively not. What is choking my business is insurance. What’s choking all business is insurance. You cannot go into business, any business — small business or large business — unless you can afford insurance,” he told Biloxi’s Sun Herald.

Health care, hiring, finance, housing … everything goes back to insurance.

yep, all of that and more – if you’re just starting out, with no track record, you have to buy your workers comp insurance from the high-risk pool and you have to pay soething like 6 months premium up front, all at once. there were some other insurance jaw-droppers in there too as i recall, but that was the decision point on my first attempt.

the second time, i almost went into partnership with someone who had the requisite ‘track record’ for lessening some of the insurance [and some other] obstacles, but ultimately decided that i neither liked nor trusted that person enough to become legally entangled with them. not to mention that i don’t play well with others. 🙂

Corporations who are geared for maximizing profits over everything else are the ones who are complaining about taxes. If they want to reduce their taxes they could just invest in their own business, instead of milking it for every penny, but it would be harder to justify their absurd executive salaries and bonuses.

My biggest expense for compliance with an environmental regulation was printing off a couple of signs warning people about the chemicals used in my copier and some of the printers. Some of my neighbors said I should have included my coffee on that sign, but they were wimps who couldn’t handle military/police coffee.

Actually the sign thing got political because it was a co-op/condo office park. The ‘executive board’ didn’t like signs in windows, and wanted people to put up a large sign at the entrance. When the owners found out what that sign would cost, the board was told to stuff it and everyone used the sign I printed off on the LaserJet.

As far as I know, small businesses join local civic groups, like the Lions or Rotary, the Better Business Bureau, and the local chamber of commerce, not national organizations. The dues are too high for the national groups and they don’t provide any real return.

1) Payroll (*the* biggest, accounts for 70%+ of a typical small business’s expenses)
2) Materials/supplies
3) Rent
4) Insurance
…
n) Taxes

Taxes just aren’t on the radar for most small businesses. We did a study here in California and found out that taxes accounted for less than 2% of a typical small business’s expenses, since most of the money that came in went out in deductible ways, whether insurance/rent/materials/payroll or reinvesting into the business (which is problematic only for larger businesses that exceed the instant depreciation cap, for small businesses it’s rare that you’ll exceed the cap of $500K and have to depreciate your capital expenses over a number of years).

Oh wait, I just talked like a person who, well, has actually run (and worked for) small businesses. My bad! Bringing reality to this discussion clearly is just liberal lies and thus to be dismissed in traditional Sgt. Shultz fashion :twisted:.

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin