Small Business Roundtable Report Delivered
By 250 News
It has been nearly a year since the Small Business Roundtable visited Prince George. The discussions took place in 18 communities from December of 2005 to April of 2006.
The Minister in charge says the report is now in and there are some common themes.
At the top of the list, recruitment and retention of skilled labour and "complexity of multiple levels of government and related regulatory requirements and taxes " The two issues were raised at all 18 locations.
Here are the other top issues, the numbers in the brackets indicate the number of locations where the issue was raised.
Human Resource and Education
- Promote small business and trades in high schools (17)
- Promote benefits of immigrant skilled labour (13)
- Provide business education to small business operators (10)
- Communicate trades training as a viable alternative to a university education (10)
Economic Growth
- Promote British Columbia as a place to visit, live and encourage growth of tourism (15)
- Encourage growth in value-added sector (11)
- Continue infrastructure projects (10)
Small Business Issues
- Access to financing (15)
- Access to high speed internet (11)
- Business succession planning (10)
Tax and Regulations
- Simplify and better communicate the Provincial Sales Tax (17)
- Continue government regulatory reform (14)
- Property assessment impacts on small business (11)
- Ensure that British Columbia has a competitive tax structure (10)
The report notes there are things small business and the government can do. For instance, business can look to non traditional labour pools for employees . On the administrative side, business can seek out information on provincial tax and make use of the on-line services already available.
The report says Government can accelerate the process for developing a long term focused and comprehensive provincial labour supply strategy and take immediate action to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the Provincial Nominee Program and ensure it is accessible to the small business community. The Small Business roundtable also outlined its plans for the year ahead including working towards securing a labour supply and supporting regulatory reform.
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Posted by: Chester on November 9 2006 9:35 PM
GST is the single biggest reason small business people quit their business.
If a business is really small and has no labour, you know just himself and whatever he is producing, then he will be OK. But as soon as he hires an employee things start to get difficult as there is no GST component in labour.
The service industry which is high in labour and rarely has significant input materials, pays the most in GST. The little fellow welding up widgits in his garage pays the least in GST as long as the costs side and retail side has no labour costs.
The no-employee small business usually pays 6 to 7% in and out, so can survive on a 15% mark up. But as soon as he hires labour the markup percentage changes a a logarithmic scale related to labour costs. The input material side has not changed but now the small business has to on collect enough mark-up to pay the GST. The GST goes up as the price increases, so a mark-up of 10% only retains 5% to pay labour with, which cost also has no offsetting GST input. So the price has to go up more.
After paying the government taxes for a while the small business fellow realizes the government is taking more money home risk free, than he is. That's why the governments like small businesses so much, in case some of you socialists haven't figured it out.
It also explains why the governments are collecting more information and eroding the cash commerce. Try paying for something with cash these days and people look at you funny. The underground economy is the best place for the government to increase their take of the economy.
Therefore the goverment does things like the Small Business Round Table in order to find out more as to what it takes to root out and tax all "free" market place transactions.
Business 101 for the NDPers on here. No more "deals" for you guys.