In recent years, many states have started to make greater efforts to facilitate small business success, and that has helped many companies gain a little more traction in their local markets. Now, a new effort is being undertaken in Florida for these same reasons.
A bill that was recently filed in Florida’s House of Representatives would allow all companies that paid less than $200,000 in sales tax over the previous year to avoid paying those taxes on Small Business Saturday next year, according to a report from Miami television station WFOR. Freshman lawmaker Rep. Jay Fant, a Republican representing Jacksonville, says the law would encourage more shoppers to patronize these smaller companies both through the various Small Business Saturday promotions those enterprises offer, but also because they would waive sales tax, offering additional savings.
And because new companies are being started all the time, Fant also wanted to make sure that these firms – which hadn’t paid sales taxes in the previous year for obvious reasons – could get into the game as well, the report said. Consequently, those companies that have been in operation for less than a year and have only raked in $50,000 in sales tax during three of the previous 12 months can likewise avoid the tax obligation.
What could this do for companies?
Of course, tax holidays have long been used by state governments at various times during the year – often around Labor Day or Memorial Day – as a means of boosting purchases at all businesses, the report said. And typically, these work pretty well to boost revenues to companies of all sizes. But one for small businesses specifically, and especially during the hectic holiday shopping season, could go a long way toward improving their bottom lines.
Another tactic that could serve to help owners to improve their companies’ finances is looking at their various expenses and seeing where they can reasonably cut costs. For instance, if they can find more affordable small business insurance policies – including those for general liability insurance – they could end up saving companies thousands of dollars annually. That’s money that they could then put toward improving other aspects of their business and further fueling their growth down the road, and that could even lead to the ability to bring on more workers or expand operations.
