Candidates aren’t getting into specifics on key matters. Small business owners want answers.
The 2016 presidential candidates have yet to provide concrete details on how they’ll tackle small business issues—and business owners are losing patience.
While Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Bernie Sanders have mentioned topics important to small business—such as taxes, the economy, healthcare, minimum wage, and government regulations—they “haven’t been getting to the meat of issues,” says FreeLogoServices.com owner Craig Bloem, in an interview with The Associated Press.
WHAT HAVE THE CANDIDATES SAID ABOUT SMALL BIZ SO FAR? READ NFIB’S ANALYSIS FOR THE LATEST.
Bloem is not the only one who feels this way. In a Wells Fargo/Gallup poll conducted in April, 69 percent of small business owners surveyed said the presidential candidates were not discussing the issues most important to them.
Only 28 percent of respondents said the candidates are, indeed, talking about issues that are most important to them. As Wells Fargo noted, that’s significantly lower than the 58 percent of adults nationwide who said candidates were addressing the issues most important to them in a separate Gallup survey in April.
Half of respondents said the election would have a “major impact” on their businesses, and only 20 percent said they understood the candidates’ positions “extremely well.”
So what have the candidates brought to the small business table? Not much. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have talked about cutting taxes—Clinton promises to provide tax relief to small business, while Trump promises to cut the tax rate for all companies to 15 percent. However, when candidates were asked for more specifics about how they’d help small businesses, their campaigns failed to do so, the AP reported.
Until the presidential hopefuls provide more detailed information, small business owners might find this election difficult to navigate. “[The candidates] love being able to say that they’re for the small business owner, or at least they pretend to. A lot of things I see are a little bit more lip service. I would like to see more concrete plans,” Ernesto Miranda, co-owner of architectural design firm Walker-Miranda, told the AP.
*Note: This news coverage does not equate to an endorsement of any candidate by NFIB.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
PREVIOUS CANDIDATE TAX COVERAGE:
What Hillary Clinton’s Tax Plan Would Mean for the Economy
Trump’s Plan to Simplify the Tax Code
Bernie Sanders’ “Aggressive” Tax Plan
