Poll: Small business OK with tax-rate hikes

A majority of small-business owners believes raising taxes on the highest earners would do less harm to the economy than cutting spending in key sectors, according to a poll conducted for a liberal advocacy group.

The poll for Small Business Majority found that 57 percent of owners said raising taxes on the top 2 percent of earners would be preferable to rolling back spending on education, healthcare and infrastructure. 

The fate of small businesses has been a key issue as both Democrats and Republicans lay the groundwork for negotiations over the so-called "fiscal cliff," a more than $600 billion mix of spending cuts and tax increases set to go into place around the end of the year.

Because many small businesses pay taxes through the individual code, Republicans have noted that hundreds of thousands of small businesses would see a tax hike under the Democratic plan to allow Bush-era tax rates to expire on family incomes above $250,000 a year.

President Obama and other Democrats have countered that their plan would only affect around 3 percent of small businesses, and that revenues from the highest earners are needed to rein in the country’s deficits.

The poll, conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic polling firm, also found that most small-business owners were aware of the fiscal cliff, and its potential impact on their companies and the economy as a whole.

More than half of owners, the poll found, are very concerned about the looming expiration of the 2-percentage-point cut in the payroll tax cut, which has now been in place for two years. 

The poll also found concerns over the automatic spending cuts that are set to go into effect, and the potential that Washington could allow the Alternative Minimum Tax to hit some 28 million more families for this year.

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