Down a long road

LITTLE ROCK — The road back from the recession has been a long and painful one for small businesses. One of the chief reasons it has been so difficult has been the staggering amount of taxes small businesses are now paying.

Exactly one decade ago, I cofounded a tour and transportation business. Since then, I have personally experienced firsthand the dangers of over-regulation and burdensome taxes.

From a dramatic increase in our unemployment-insurance tax, to the recent payroll-tax increase, small businesses are being asked to absorbmore and more every month, including many taxes and regulatory compliance fees most Americans don’t realize small businesses are already paying. Then there are the costly regulatory and compliance audits that go hand-in-hand with all of it.

At one point, we actually endured six grueling audits, from six different regulatory agencies-all within a fivemonth period.

Now there’s another tax-and future audit-to add to the growing list: the new Health Insurance Tax, or HIT, which is a little-known part of Obamacare. The HIT is set to be implemented next year and will affect more than two million American small businesses. It has a price tag of $100 billion over the next 10 years, and will be directly passed on to the vulnerable small-business community.

With over 240,000 small businesses in Arkansas employing over a million workers, this is going to have serious implications on the kind of coverage many Arkansans receive and the overall costs should someone require serious medical attention. In short, the HIT will likely have direct implications for all our families.

Long before Obamacare, we offered fair wages and decent healthcare coverage for all our full-time employees, always making sure employees were paid before we were.

After Obamacare, we witnessed sudden and stunning increases in our health-insurance rates, a 42 percent rate increase alone just for our own family’s coverage. If you multiply those rate increases by the number of employees on our payroll, the cost to keep existing coverage is simply staggering.

Now we may be forced to switch to health plans with higher deductibles, making it difficult for some employees to afford vital medications or procedures. HIT may also mean we may have to suspend hiring and stop growing our business altogether.

On a recent business trip discussing these new changes, I unfortunately found way too many industry colleagues who echoed my concerns. Many have decided to stop hiring and to cut back on employee benefits altogether due to the vast amount of taxation they are enduring.

I am worried that if this continues at the rate we are going, the government will likely tax many more people right out of business. The end result will likely be an even larger population not only without employer sponsored health coverage, but also without jobs.

How does this make sense when we are trying to recover from a recession and grow the economy here in Arkansas?

Over the last few years there has been an exponential increase in the cost of doing business. It is my belief that if we repeal the HIT, we will ensure the preservation of affordable health coverage for everyone. And in the process of doing so, we just may also ensure the preservation of our jobs and our delicate economy.

Gina Martin is founder and vice president of Little Rock Tours and Travel.