MotionMobs President Taylor Peake testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Small Business Committee in Washington, D.C. at the hearing “Small Business Tax Reform: Modernizing the Code for the Nation’s Job Creators” on Wednesday, October 4.
As a successful entrepreneur and consultant to many businesses across the state, Taylor provided expert experience to accompany the discussion around H.R. 3717, the Small Business Owners’ Tax Simplification Act Taylor provided a voice for business owners in Birmingham, in Alabama, and across the entire Southeast through her participation in this hearing. Other witnesses testifying with Taylor were from Virginia, California, and Washington, D.C.
MotionMobs is an active member of ACT: The App Association, a trade group that represents small business app developers around the country. The App Association successfully petitioned on Taylor’s behalf to secure her invitation to testify in front of the Committee.
Business taxes as a whole are overly complex, and this disproportionately becomes a heavy burden on small and mid-size businesses in Alabama and across the nation. To illustrate the need for simplification of the tax code for the Committee, Taylor focused on three main points of the proposed reform.
Account validation
Currently, the IRS does not validate that the bank account set to receive a return is, in fact, owned by the claiming taxpayer. This leads to incorrectly distributed returns alarmingly frequently, and it becomes a large burden on small business owners to rectify the issue with already limited resources. Introducing a test to validate the receiving bank account as owned by the taxpayer would alleviate this.
Cafeteria plans
The extension of cafeteria plan benefits has a huge impact on small businesses. In small companies, it’s common for a dramatic percentage of the staff to have an ownership stake that renders them ineligible for cafeteria plan benefits. Reform to this section of the tax code provides huge incentive to small business owners to offer good benefits to their team.
Worker classification
Since the sharing economy and the classification of workers within it is relatively new, the current tax code does not reflect these unique relationships. Software is a major factor in adjusting these regulations to allow for proper onboarding of independent contractors while protecting their freedom to practice their trade.
As a small business, MotionMobs encourages the U.S. House of Representatives to pass H.R. 3717 and continue the discussion around tax reform to support the creation and success of new small businesses in Alabama and across the country.