Small business

Note: This page is a reproduction of the Hillary for America policy proposal on small business.

Small businesses all over the country are ready to grow and hire, and entrepreneurs are ready to venture out on their own—if they can just get that next loan, enter a new market, or have one fewer form to fill out.

As president, Hillary will make it easier to start and grow a small business in America by:

Unlocking access to capital. We need to give small businesses—including women- and minority-owned small businesses—access to the financing they need to build, grow, and hire. Hillary will work to boost small-business lending by easing burdens for community banks and credit unions. Her plan will also allow entrepreneurs to defer student-loan payments with no interest while they get their ventures off the ground.
Cutting red tape to streamline the process of starting a small business. It shouldn’t take longer to start a small business in the United States than it does in Canada or Denmark. Hillary will offer state and local governments new federal incentives to cut red tape and streamline unnecessary licensing to make it less costly to start a small business.
Providing tax relief and simplification for small businesses. America’s smallest businesses—those with one to five employees—spend 150 hours and $1,100 per employee making sure they comply with federal tax laws. That’s more than 20 times higher than the average for larger firms. Hillary will create a new standard deduction for small businesses—like the one available to individual filers. She will simplify the rules so small businesses can track and file their taxes as easily as filling out a checkbook or printing a bank statement. And her plan would quadruple the start-up tax deduction to significantly lower the cost of starting a business.
Incentivize health care benefits for small businesses and their employees. Hillary will expand the health care tax credit for small employers with up to 50 employees through the Affordable Care Act. And she will simplify complex phase-out and eligibility rules so that it’s easier for many more small businesses to get the credit and cover their workers.
Opening new markets. Every small business across America should be able to enter new markets—whether those markets are across town or across the world. We should invest in the roads, bridges, ports, and airports that make it easier for small businesses to reach new customers, and encourage innovations that unlock new markers for small businesses.
Making sure small businesses get paid—not stiffed. Hillary believes it is outrageous when big businesses like Donald Trump’s build their fortunes by repeatedly stiffing the small businesses that do work for them. She will stop large companies from using expensive litigation hurdles to deny small businesses payment for services, and she’ll give small businesses recourse to take on predatory behavior.
Supporting small-business owners and entrepreneurs. Hillary will work to provide incubators, mentoring, and training to 50,000 entrepreneurs and small-business owners in underserved communities across the country.
Make the federal government more responsive to small business. Hillary will push the federal agencies to make government more user-friendly, guaranteeing a 24-hour response time to small businesses with questions about federal regulations and access to capital programs.