Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is doing her best to attract small business owners to her side ahead of next month’s election, but so far, she’s falling well short.
The Job Creators Network, one of the leading advocates for small businesses in the U.S., released a poll recently that showed GOP nominee Donald Trump is ahead of Harris by 12 points among the more than 30 million small business owners in the country.
Harris is touting a new tax credit that she has proposed to give to small business owners. However, one thing she has overlooked in the messaging here is that the $50,000 tax credit is only available to new startup businesses.
This means that the people who have already launched a business can’t take advantage of it. Instead of making small business owners feel good and want to support her, stuff like that can actually anger them and make them wonder why they aren’t eligible for such a credit.
Harris also plans to increase corporate taxes. And while she says that it won’t affect small business owners, she’s wrong.
About 20% of small business owners who run a C corporation are going to be directly impacted by this tax increase. Plus, other small business owners are going to be indirectly affected, as large corporations they might do business with might cut back on such deals.
It’s not just Harris’ lackluster small business plans that are keeping owners away from her side. It’s also the experience they had when Trump was president just four years ago.
During the Trump administration, the overall economy was thriving. Workers’ wages were high and small businesses experienced rapid growth and big profits. All of this was due at least in part to the tax cuts Trump instituted to help spur the economy.
All Lee Habeeb, a columnist for Newsweek, wrote recently:
“Trump’s tax cuts didn’t discriminate or create most-favored-status groups. They instead advanced the interests of all business owners equally. And powerfully.”
One big problem facing Harris is that small business owners don’t agree with Harris when she says that life will be better under her leadership. They remember how great it was under Trump four years ago, and they are living how challenging it is under the leadership of the Biden administration.
As Habeeb wrote:
“While Harris and her Democrat allies caricature Trump’s tax cuts, he understood the plight of small-business owners. He understood how those tax cuts — corporate and personal — fuel the growth and success of the business community. And fuel the American economy too.
“Trump understands these things because he was himself the product of a family construction business. He understands what makes small-business owners tick. What they worry about, what they go through and what motivates them. Most important, Trump understands that small-business owners want their businesses to grow into larger ones, with the hope of one day passing them along to their children.”