THE LEGAL DEFINITION OF SMALL BUSINESS: dave kamp knows. he's the ranking republican member on the house ways and means committee . to him, the definition of small business is a footnote. literally. "according to the joint committee on taxation , 94% of all u.s. businesses in 2007 were "s" corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships. pass-through business types commonly used by small businesses ." they call them pass-through companies because they file no taxes, passing through profits to the owners who report them on their individual tax returns instead. in short, they are considered small , not because they have a small payroll, but because they have a small number of owners. it's not the income that's small , it's not the number of employees that's small , it's just the total number of owners that's small . in the case of "s" corp .s, up to 100 owners. when politicians talk about small businesses , they are including any company that pays taxes as a pass-through. house democrats last week identified three limited partnerships that file as pass-throughs. a pipeline company called enterprise, the wall street firm, kohlberg, kravitz, and waters, and pricewaterhousecoopers. their own website lists partnership after partnership after partnership that make up a small business empire of 70,000 employees. according to the " washington post ," more than 1 million people who reported at least $200,000 in income in 2008 were partnerships and "s" corps. the richer you are, the more likely you are to call yourself a small business that way. 89% of americans who make more than $10 million a year filed as a partnership or an "s" corp . in 2008 , more than 500,000 of these supposed small businesses had more than $ 1 million in assets.

but they don't get it. They imagine mom and pop owners because that is what fake news wants them to believe.

I get blank stares and then get called a name that they don't understand the definition of...

It had 200 employees.

Depending on your perspective that is small, or it is large. Compared to Wal-mart or IBM or Westar energy, that is a small business.

But compared to the businesses on my block in the downton, it is huge, even compared to the Sports Bar where I also worked (after I quit/got laid off from the factory). Other than the bank, my block included
1. the sports bar - maybe 30 employees, most of them part-time
2. the flower shop - maybe 3 employees (including the owner)
3. my bookstore - one employee
4. the clothing store - maybe 2 employees (including the owner)
5. the jewelry store - perhaps four employees
6. the drug store - ten employees, at most

There's six small businesses with less than 1/4 the employees of that factory. And myself, I would consider the sports bar and the drug store to be fairly big businesses.

It is not the income that matters, it is the profit after all expenses that gets taxed

Most people say how much they made for the year and then think in those terms for a business.
A small business could have gross income of $10 million and have expenses of $9.9 million and have to pay taxes on that amount and then still have personal deductions that are available to everyone.

Here you can download a PDF over 40 pages long, including footnotes, showing just how the SBA defines small business:

http://www.sba.gov/content/small-business-size-standards

Note that gross revenue can be up to $35 million, number of employees up to 1,500, or assets up to $175 million, depending on the kind of business you're in.

I'm sure that somewhere there is a breakdown of how many businesses there are in each NAICS category, and maybe even a revenue breakdown, but while there a lot of pizzerias and dry cleaners out there, they may not represent "small business" as those who actually make decisions see it.

Romney and Ryan want to give a tax cut to 3% of businesses that are already doing extremely well, making more than all other small businesses combined.

As Biden pointed out, these are not what people normally think of as "small businesses". They are things like hedge funds, which may have a small number of employees but make huge amounts of money. The question is whether most middle-class Americans want to pay for a tax cut that will help hedge funds.

"BIDEN: "What we did is, we saved $716 billion and put it back, applied it to Medicare."

THE FACTS: Contrary to Biden's assertion, not all the money cut from Medicare is going back into the program in some other way. The administration is cutting $716 billion over 10 years in Medicare payments to providers and using some of the money to improve benefits under the program. But most of the money is being used to expand health care coverage outside of Medicare."


That is completely wrong. No matter where that savings is spent, the fact remains that - from an accounting perspective, the entire $716 billion in savings extends the life of the medicare trust fund.