LV small businesses sound off against regulations

Complex tax codes, burdensome regulation and high health care costs plague small businesses nationwide.

A national teleconference sponsored by the National Federation of Independent Business Friday sought to develop an agenda to persuade Congress to deal with those issues.

Comments from various cities echoed the sentiments of about 15 Las Vegas business owners who participated from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. Another local conference site was the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

Not the least of the concerns voiced was the barrage of voluminous, complex and ever-changing tax requirements.

"It's unfathomable that anyone can properly report taxes," said Cira Drake of Cirani Corp., a casino cigarette-girl concessionaire business. "It challenges the ethical side of everybody to comprehend and report what is required."

Kathy Apfel, owner of Kat Tax, agreed. She said onerous regulations are problematic for small businesses.

And while she updates her education to keep up with IRS regulations, the people charged with administering tax regulations often do not. That is a hindrance to small business survival, she said.

Several people derided the number of regulatory agencies with which a business has to deal with -- the Internal Revenue Service, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to name a few.

"For 90 percent of small business owners, they are visionaries, not administrators, " Apfel said. "Regulations put more people out of business than lack of production."

And when small business owners aren't spending time complying with taxes and regulations, they're struggling with health care coverage for their employees.

Managed care, health maintenance organizations and the like have kept costs in check to some extent. But many reported the re-occurrence of increasing costs and noted the complexity managed care has wrought.

"It's caused more problems," said Rocky Brandonisio, president of Horizon Vending Service. "It has a tendency to confuse people and it's getting more expensive. I'm constantly shopping for better plans."

Politicians, congressional aides and small business advocates revealed proposals to ease these afflictions.

Among them:

* Increasing tax breaks for small business health care costs to place them on par with big corporations. Large corporations get a 100 percent tax break on these costs while the self-employed only get a 40 percent deduction. "I think that is patently unfair," said Dan Danner of the NFIB.

* Promoting small businesses combining with other businesses in their field to purchase health care insurance in volume at cheaper rates like big companies receive. Medical savings accounts were also discussed as a way to ease costs.

* Legal reform was also a hot topic. The NFIB is touting caps on punitive damages and "loser pays" provisions that require losers in lawsuits to pay fees. Both proposals have met resistance in recent years.

* To reign in regulatory burdens, the House Subcommittee for Regulatory Affairs is studying requiring more cost-benefit analysis for new regulations and ways to cut down on paperwork.

At the end of the two-hour conference, participants ranked reform proposals. These rankings will be tabulated to set the NFIB's legislative agenda to be presented July 9 at the Small Business Congressional Summit.

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