NFIB Job Creation Plans ChartNews headlines are trumpeting the Labor Department's report this morning of a better-than-expected increase in hiring nationally in July, but the National Federation of Independent Business has issued a grim report on small employers and job growth based on its latest monthly random survey of 1,803 NFIB members.

U.S. employers overall added 163,000 jobs in July—the biggest monthly uptick in five months. But small businesses eliminated jobs for a second month in a row "at a time when growth is needed," NFIB Chief Economist William Dunkelberg reported in a statement. The NFIB survey results indicated a net job loss per small firm over the past few months (seasonally adjusted) of .04. "Readings had been on the rise; from December to May they were zero or positive, suggesting that employment might be turning around. But June, and now July, have ended that possibility," Dunkelberg stated.

To be sure, nearly 80 percent of small business owners surveyed made no net change to employment in

More business owners are getting credit with personal cards

Small business issues continue to hold center stage in election season. Here's a roundup of current events and reports from around the web this week related to small business and politics, including new legislation that would support immigrant entrepreneurs, various explorations of the access-to-credit crisis, and a discussion of tax cuts and small business.

Supporting immigrant entrepreneurs

A Democrat and a Republican in the House have teamed up to introduce a bill that would offer green cards to foreign entrepreneurs who live in the U.S. and establish and invest a minimum of $125,000 in a business here that creates and sustains full-time employment for at least three U.S. workers over two years. The National Small Business Association blogged its support for the legislation, which it says would also modify the EB-5 visa program to attract additional foreign investment.

Fewer debt delinquencies

Small business lending in June hit its lowest point since October, but was up two percent

At a time when Republicans and Democrats can't seem to come to terms on anything, most politicians are in agreement on one thing: the corporate tax code should be simplified.

Tax code complexity costs employers billions

We reported here several weeks ago that far fewer small businesses than the Federal government expected had claimed a tax credit made available to them through the Affordable Care Act. Business owners cited the complexity of complying with the tax code as a major impedance.

Now in a front page story titled, "Firms Pass Up Tax Breaks, Citing Hassles, Complexity," the Wall Street Journal reports that this is true not just for health insurance tax credits but for many other tax breaks available to employers. Fed up with paperwork and leery of inviting IRS scrutiny, businesses are opting to skip deductions for energy efficient buildings, for hiring unemployed veterans and workers from disadvantaged groups, for increasing research, and for producing goods domestically, according to the Journal's report.

Though large

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;

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.

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