President Trump, Congress have empowered our small business

Independent Newsmedia

When you run a small business, you feel the heat every day. We say that as the owners of a commercial air conditioning company.

There’s constant pressure to serve customers, retain talent, stay ahead of the competition and do a thousand other things. But Congress and President Trump just removed one of the biggest barriers facing small businesses like ours.

In the major tax legislation that the president signed over the summer, our elected leaders saved us from a massive tax hike and gave us permanent tax relief that is already empowering us to do more for our community.

We’re the third-generation owners of our small business, and we’ve been at the helm for the past nine years. From the start, taxes were one of our biggest burdens, standing in the way of the growth, job creation and investment we wanted.

Thankfully, the very next year, President Trump and Congress gave us historic relief in the form of the Small Business Deduction. Basically, for the past eight years, small businesses have been able to deduct 20% of our business income. This puts us on a more level playing field with big corporations.

While the Small Business Deduction was a godsend, it wasn’t permanent. It was set to expire at the end of this year, putting us on the hook for a much bigger tax bill. The situation would have been even harder than it was in 2016 because of all the other burdens that have been added in recent years, especially regulations. We would have had to make some tough decisions.

Now we’re making entirely different decisions, thanks to the permanent tax cut. We’ve put in place new plans to grow and give back to our community.

To get a sense of what small businesses like ours are now empowered to do, consider what we did after the initial tax cut eight years ago. To start, it let us pay off our small business loan at a much faster rate, ultimately getting it off our books. Now, we can use the extra money to invest in our operations and workers.

The tax cut also helped us invest in new equipment. Some new fleet trucks. A new forklift for the warehouse. A slew of new tools, including top-quality welders. These investments have helped us be more proficient in bidding against bigger businesses with more resources. Now, with a permanent tax cut, we can invest and compete with even more confidence.

And most importantly, we’re better able to help our workers thrive. Over the few years, the tax cut enabled us to give our workers an unanticipated but much-needed raise, retaining the people we need to succeed. We were even able to pay a greater share of their health care costs. Now, with permanent relief, increased wage hikes are manageable for the foreseeable future.

None of this would be possible if D.C. had let this tax relief expire. We would have had to raise prices and cut costs, and over time, the pressure would have only increased. No wonder 95% of Americans were worried about the damage if the Small Business Deduction expired. Now they don’t have to worry, and studies show that small businesses like ours will create 1.2 million jobs a year thanks to this relief.

We’re grateful that our leaders in Washington delivered for us. They’ve given us the immediate confidence to keep growing, investing and giving back.

Arizona will be better off, because thousands of other small businesses are now empowered to do what they do best. That’s the power of this permanent tax relief: It will make our state’s future permanently brighter.

Editor’s note: Rene and Heather LeBlanc own Artic Air Heating & Cooling Inc. in Phoenix. They are members of the National Federation of Independent Business. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.