Would extending tax cuts to all create jobs?

When he proposed an extension of Bush era tax cuts for families earning under $250,000 a year, President Obama this week suggested the move would benefit all but two percent of households. But because those earning above $250,000 would experience a tax increase, Republicans characterize the proposal as a massive penalty on small businesses. A bigger tax bill would prevent small business owners from creating jobs at a critical juncture in the US economy, the argument goes.

Jeffrey Cornwall, Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University, explains in The Entrepreneurial Mind blog at the Christian Science Monitor: "Many who fall into this proposed tax increase are entrepreneurs. We know that for every 1% increase in the marginal tax rate that we can expect a 1.5 to 2.0 percent decrease in start-up activity."

In an editorial on the subject, the Wall Street Journal points out: "Congress's Joint Tax Committee—not a conservative outfit—estimates that in 2013 about 940,000

After attempting to appeal to small business owners earlier this week with a proposal to extend Bush-era tax cuts for households with income under $250,000, President Obama today buttered up small businesses again. The White House announced of a set of six initiatives designed to help small businesses expand and create jobs by streamlining some cumbersome processes for getting paid by the government and for getting certain government loans and bonds. The plan also addresses two tax credits.

In a statement, the White House said five of the initiatives are "immediate executive actions" and the sixth is a legislative proposal.

The package aims to help Federal small business subcontractors get paid faster; reiterates the President's support for permitting small businesses to write off up to $250,000 in capital investments in 2013; revamps the Small Business Administration's Small Loan Advantage program; streamlines application paperwork for SBA surety bonds and SBA's Disaster Loan Program;

Gregg Fairbrothers teaches Dartmouth business students to be entrepreneurial.

How can a business owner be more entrepreneurial? That's one of the questions Gregg Fairbrothers tackles in his book From Idea to Success: The Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network Guide for Startups. Fairbrothers managed and started oil and gas exploration and production companies on three continents before switching gears to teach entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. He wrote Idea to Success with Tess Winter last year to walk readers through the process of launching a new company, product, or service from concept to business. Now he pens the Ideas to Success column for Forbes with Catalina Gorla to further explore ideas about what makes a startup successful.

This week, Yahoo Small Business Advisor spoke with Fairbrothers about small business owners and entrepreneurs, which are not necessarily two terms with the same meaning.

YSBA: Not all small business people feel that the term "entrepreneur" applies to them. Do you consider anyone who has

Microbusiness owners are concerned about government involvement in healthcare.

"The government will become too involved with my health care" was the number one concern cited by self-employed people responding to a survey conducted shortly after the Supreme Court delivered its decision upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The National Association for the Self Employed conducted the survey of 886 self employed and micro-business owners within hours of the ruling last week.

Half of respondents said they fully or mainly oppose the health care reform law, nearly 60 percent said they disagree with the Court's decision, and half said Congress should now work to repeal the entire legislation. More than 60 percent also agreed that their viewpoint on the health reform law will affect the way they vote in the November elections.

Fewer than one-third of respondents "fully or mainly support the law." Sixteen percent said they see the law as a mixed bag of good and bad changes, and only 3 percent admitted to not knowing enough to form a qualified opinion.

With the Affordable Care Act force you to get health benefits you don't want?

The National Association for the Self Employed, a group that helps entrepreneurs secure benefits including health insurance, has warned that the Affordable Care Act threatens to increase health insurance rates for the self employed by 10-13 percent by 2014. The organization predicts that a section of the bill mandating "essential health benefits" will force insurance companies to expand the minimum benefits they provide, even in high-deductible plans. Self-employed individuals therefore "may have to pay for a health insurance product that they don't need or want," says NASE spokeswoman Katie Vlietstra.

What are essential health benefits? That remains to be seen. According to the Affordable Care Act language, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will define them, "except that such benefits shall include at least the following general categories and the items and services covered within the categories: (A) Ambulatory patient services. (B) Emergency services. (C) Hospitalization.

We hosted a live chat on Twitter yesterday to discuss the topic of online marketing in general and the new Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard in particular. It was hosted by @SmallBizLady, aka Melinda Emerson, host of #SmallBizChat, Author of the book, "Become Your Own Boss in 12 Months" http://www.succeedasyourownboss.co.

We compiled the highlights of the chat into the following transcript. The only changes have been omissions and a few corrections of typos to improve clarity. We also made a Twitter list of all the active participants which you can subscribe to here: https://twitter.com/#!/YSmallBusiness/ydashboard-chat.

Chat questions and answers

@SmallBizLady 12:29pm
Good afternoon everyone and thanks so much for joining us for the Yahoo! Marketing Dashboard Tweet Chat!

@SmallBizLady 12:32pm
Q1 What are some techniques to attract new customers?

@YSmallBusiness 12:32pm
@SmallBizLady is the author of Become Your Own Boss and blogger of Succeed As Your Own Boss.

@SmallBizLady 12:32pm
A1 The

Sorting Affordable Care facts from fiction

If you're self-employed or a small business owner, the contradictory responses from small business advocates to yesterday's Supreme Court decision might have left you confused about whether the decision is good news or bad for your business. Some say the Affordable Care Act will keep your healthcare costs in check, others say it will jack them up.

The President claims the law will help small employers, his opponents say the opposite. Some suggest that would-be entrepreneurs with new-found affordable access to insurance will be unleashed from corporate cuffs. Others say costs of insurance for the self-employed will grow out of control. It's no wonder that hundreds of comments from Yahoo! Small Business Advisor readers reveal widespread confusion and politically motivated biases about the law.

Who's a small business owner to believe? Sitting down and reading the law yourself, which you can do here, might not be as cumbersome as you think. The word "employer" appears on only 123 pages of

Most small business federal procurement dollars go to big business, group says.

The Obama Administration hasn't yet released its annual report on the proportion of federal contract dollars awarded to small businesses in the past year, but the American Small Business League predicts that when the document arrives this summer it will misrepresent the facts. Not that the league is accusing the Obama Administration of doing anything its predecessors haven't. It's common practice for big businesses disguised as small ones to be counted among the awardees of federal procurement dollars designated for small business.

Since 1953, the federal government has been mandated to spend 23 percent of the total value of all federal prime contracts with small businesses. But "fraud, abuse, and loopholes in federal policy and implementation result in the majority of federal small business contracts being illegally diverted to large corporations every year," the watchdog group says. The organization estimates that only 10 percent of federal contract dollars were awarded to