Petition Tag - small business

‘Vivid’ is a light and entertainment festival run over 17 days in Sydney which, last year attracted half a million people to the city, enhancing community spirit and supporting business and trade operators.

On 8 April this year North Sydney Council agreed to fund the expansion of the Vivid festival to include North Sydney with a $100,000 contribution in 2013 to the over-$1million contribution being made by Destination NSW to this development. Expanding ‘Vivid’ to North Sydney would bring an estimated 350,000 visitors to our shores – to our cafes and restaurants, to Luna Park , our art galleries, small businesses one and all, and bring great economic benefit and much needed ‘life’ back to our region, especially important in the colder months and outside business hours.

Last Monday 15th April at an Extraordinary meeting, the Council rescinded this decision, denying any funding and thereby any potential for economic benefit in North Sydney. We were at the meeting and heard all the arguments as to why the Council should not participate, however, there are many better reasons for this project to be supported.

North Sydney Chamber of Commerce has written an open letter to the Councillors explaining why we think they should support Vivid – and now we are asking for your support. We believe that businesses in North Sydney LGA have been ignored for too long and that it is time that we stand up and demand to be heard.

The North Sydney Chamber of Commerce is absolutely apolitical about this – we only want the best for business in North Sydney LGA and international events such as Vivid are about much needed economic stimulation. We hope we can count on your support.

And Vivid is just the beginning - we need more and more activities of this nature and we need to tell that to Council!

If you would like Council to be more supportive of business and listen to us when we ask to be heard, please sign this petition. Time its tight for this project as we would like to present this petition to Council on Monday, so please don’t delay – and please pass this on to your business colleagues.

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For too long, small business has been Unpaid Tax Collectors.

Since July 2000, small business has collected, calculated and remitted Goods & Services Tax (GST) to the Australian Tax Office without payment or due recognition.

The average cost to small business is estimated to be a minimum of $1,000 per year, excluding accountants’ fees.

The government says this cost is covered by business having ‘use’ of the GST until payment date –rubbish!

It doesn’t add up and it’s not good enough!

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The purpose of this petition is to stop the "Cashua Drive Road Widening Project" which would widen South Cashua Drive from 3 lanes to 5 lanes from Second Loop Road to Celebration Blvd and from 2 lanes to 3 lanes from Celebration Blvd to Knollwood Rd (Forest Lake).

The widening project will begin in early 2014 and take about a year and a half to complete to approximately fall of 2015. The SCDOT, county of Florence, and city of Florence need to look at alternatives to this widening project such as improving the “cut through” corridors between Cashua Drive and Palmetto Street (Hwy 76).

Traffic issues, we feel, would be better improved with these alternatives.

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Wales has the most expensive rates in the UK for small firms, while supermarkets are given the cheapest rates in the UK.

In Scotland, supermarkets pay more than small firms.

We want a similar and fairer two-tier business rate system and call for the devolving of business rates to Wales.

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Design Infusion, part of the Waregroup, was started in May 2010. We deal with web design and more recently print. Starting as a small business we are very careful not to lease equipment and pay all our bills on time. The company has grown at a steady rate, with a few ups and downs as all new businesses do and we had reached the point where it was time to expand.

Originally based in Wolverhampton we moved to Stafford and employed a new member of staff to help us expand into print. Although we had dealt in print before more customers were asking for the service and decided to dedicate time and money in a large marketing campaign.

The campaign was based in the west midlands, so after sourcing a courier we felt comfortable that we would be successful. On the 6th of July we received some bad news. The courier company had declined the company an account, due to a bad credit rating from Experian - 6/100 according to their system and after asking a few questions we found that they were using data from addresses that we had not used for over two years!

Shock set in, as many of our clients would credit check us and, according to our own credit scoring system we have a good rating - 47/100!

I therefore called Experian only to be told we would have to pay £99 to find out why we had a bad rating and furthermore, to dispute or change the data that they held we would have to buy the report from them - they wouldn't accept any other data. Still in shock I declined to make the payment, and ended the phone call. After discussing the issue with my staff, I called the federation of small businesses for legal advice. To my horror I found that the industry is totally unregulated, and we have no rights at all in this regard.

So before confronting Experian once again I contacted our own credit scoring company “Credit Safe UK”. They seemed all too familiar with our problem, explaining that their report system is updated regularly and is more understanding towards businesses trying to help rather than hinder companies.

So once again I called Experian, only to be met by the same brick wall. The person who took my call insisted that payment must be made to receive the report, that they would not revise the data unless we made the payment and she would not tell me anything verbally regarding the matter.

Not only is this matter affecting our plans for expansion, we have already started interviews for a graphic designer. It is also threatening my current staff, with the potential of having to layoff of my new employee until this matter is resolved. I have already instigated an advertising campaign, which now I can’t follow up because of the impracticality of hand delivering all orders.

The most worrying issue is that it doesn’t sound uncommon, and in such difficult times for all businesses. It troubles me that they seem to be making money from other people’s businesses almost amounting to extortion tactics - credit checking another company costs half the £99 from Experian and less than £15 from other companies - their turnover just this last year was £362m! Such a useful tool for companies should not be unregulated and open to abuse.

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SAVE the Minerva road milkbar and other small businesses.

IGA is planning on opening in amongst a small group of shops along Minerva road.

Minerva road milkbar has been running for decades. It is part of the local community and landscape supporting a dozen local families in employment.

Already local businesses will need to deal with the loss of business due to a local school closing and this extra and unfair competition will be devastating.

This is the "big boys" coming in to crush the small business operators. Many businesses' will suffer and possibly close causing the street to become an unsightly ghost town.

There is already limited parking and is not suitable for a major supermarket to take up business premises. The IGA is going to be 500sq and this requires 40 customer parking and 6 staff parking. IGA is suggesting that there is enough off street parking in this already jam packed street. Their idea is that customers can us parking that is in front of three local schools! This will increase traffic infront of the schools thus placing our kids at danger.

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1st. There is no consensus in the IPCC or in science on Co2

“This claim that the IPCC is the worlds top 1500 or 2500 scientists: you look at the bibliographies of the people and it is simply not true. There are quite a number of non-scientists. Those people that are specialists but don’t agree with the polemic and resign, and there are a number of them I know of, they are simply put on the author list and become part of this “2500 of the worlds top scientists”. We have a vested interest in causing panic, because then, money will flow to climate science.” Says Professor Paul Reiter – IPCC and Pasteur Institute of Paris.

“I often heard it said that there is a consensus of thousands of scientists on the global warming issue and that humans are causing a catastrophic change to the climate system. Well I am one scientist and there are many that simply think that is not true.” Says Professor John Christy – Lead Author IPCC

Another Quote: “The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change misled the press and public into believing that thousands of scientists backed its claims on manmade global warming, according to Mike Hulme, a prominent climate scientist and IPCC insider. The actual number of scientists who backed that claim was “only a few dozen experts,” he states in a paper for Progress in Physical Geography, co-authored with student Martin Mahony.“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading scientists have reached a consensus that human activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous,” the paper states unambiguously, adding that they rendered “the IPCC vulnerable to outside criticism.”

2nd Natural sources can explain any rise in Co2
Climatologist Roy Spencer (Former NASA employee) Writes:Quote
“C13/C12 isotope ratios measured at various latitudes show that CO2 trends are not necessarily from fossil fuel burning.
.. the year-to-year increase in atmospheric CO2 does not look very much like the yearly rate of manmade CO2 emissions. The following figure, a version of which appears in the IPCC’s 2007 report, clearly shows that nature has a huge influence over the amount of CO2 that accumulates in the atmosphere every year.”

3rd Global warming due to Co2 is fraudulent.
Quote: ”Last week Professor Hal Lewis, an American scientist of great distinction quit the American Physical Society over what he saw as their perceived role in giving oxygen to the great global warming swindle. His voice is added to a growing list of eminent international scientist now going public. No less significant in that last is Dr David Evans, consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005 and a key government scientist working towards the Kyoto Protocol.

Evans first spoke out in The Australian to say, “There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.” (‘No smoking hot spot,’ July 18, 2008).

More and more of the public are now persuaded that global warming is the greatest criminal fraud ever perpetrated. It is shockingly covered up by the US and UK governments who knowingly and cynically persist in unlawfully denying Freedom of Information requests (FOIA) time after time. “

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This initiative is imperative for the future development and relevance of programs, resources and legislation implemented by the Canadian government.

We encourage a new national standard to accurately identify and assess the various categories of independent business, including currently-used terms such as self-employed, micro, small, gazelles, medium, and high-growth.

The lack of national standardization has lead to great confusion, misrepresentation of issues and concerns, and ultimately development of programs and resources that have failed to support the intended recipients.

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The recent imposition of the draconian road restrictions (Double Yellow Lines) on the Pinner Road in front of all the small stores means almost certain destruction of some of the small stores, which will create a domino affect on the rest of the businesses and hence, the area will resemble a desolate wasteland not too dis-similar to the once prosperous North Harrow.

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This submission relies heavily on the Richard Report "Small Business and Government" to the Conservative Party of May 2008 (http://www.bl.uk/bipc/pdfs/richardreport2008.pdf)

The signatories agree wholeheartedly with the broad conclusions and recommendations of the Richard Report.

The following specific detailed suggestions could, in the signatories' opinions, be usefully added to government policy:

1. Open up the Enterprise Investment Scheme

The problem:
EIS Relief, while broadly excellent, has four main drawbacks:

It is not available to existing Directors of the investee company
It is restricted to ordinary shares
It is restricted to higher rate tax
It is relatively complex to administer

Solution:
Extend the scheme to
non-executive directors whether or not they already hold office.
genuine third party risk money, regardless of 'type' of investment: loans of greater than three years, preference shares, convertible loans.
to full tax relief. Not many basic rate taxpayers will wish to take advantage, but why not if they have the means? It will increase the gearing on the investment from the investor's perspective from 1 in 4 to 2 in 3.

Simplify the administration by
making the investor responsible through his tax return,
subject to penalty for wrongful claiming.
making the rules and exclusions simpler
Retain certain non-qualifying businesses
(property, financial services, investment and so forth)
and geographical and trade limitations
(must be UK domiciled with UK domiciled shareholders)
but otherwise de-restrict so as to facilitate taxpayer compliance and reduce administration costs

2. Develop the Research and Development tax credits

The Problem:
R&D tax credits are broadly very welcome but:

They do nothing to assist start-up research for new businesses which are (almost by definition) non corporation tax and non PAYE payers.
They fail to reflect the considerable risk taken by start up businesses, despite the very significant future benefits to the economy brought by successes.

The Solution:
Create a new system whereby
Loans against future tax credits: Create longer term commercial loans which can be granted to SMEs against future R&D tax credits (so the loan can be repaid from the tax credit when the company begins to pay tax); such loans to be underwritten by the government, hence written off in the event of company failure.
Matched funding: Private third party investment into qualifying SME R&D is matched by government, whether or not the investment already carries EIS relief. The qualifying utilisation of the matched funds should be guaranteed by the investor: if audit proves that the funds were not spent on a qualifying purpose, he has to repay the matching through the tax system.

Create new definitions of 'qualifying R&D'
technology, engineering, environment etc?
or create exclusions (sales methodology, administration, training)

This will allow early stage research to be very significantly funded by the government, but it will only follow market forces and third party investment, and policed through the existing administration of HMRC.

3. Change the Enterprise Loan Guarantee Scheme to be less asset based

The Problem:
EFG is simply not working as bankers will only provide loans against assets and small companies simply don’t have suitable security.

The Solution:
Government should underwrite the major part of each individual loan, with
lenders taking a small share of the risk to ensure sensible lending.

4. Create a 'Stock Exchange' for Innovation

Problem:
The chronic waste, and/or leakage, of 'British Inventiveness' which is an inevitable consequence of the traditional avenues of commercialisation open to Inventors.

Solution:
The microFunding secure internet marketplace where Big Business, SMEs and individuals can match 'Technical/Business Requirement' with 'Innovation/Invention' with 'Business skills' and with early stage 'Investment'.

5. Channel subsidy through qualified Business Advisors

The Problem
At present small sums of money are made available through a management and leadership grant. This is an effort by the government to “second guess” what small business needs. This leads to curious abuses for little direct impact

The Solution
Create a qualification/recognise existing qualifications that enable the government to ensure that business advice is provided by those with the appropriate experience.
Enable the qualified advisors to apply for appropriate levels of subsidy to meet the needs generated by Small Business.


These changes, especially if coupled with the above funding initiatives, will encourage and permit the creation of a customer-led enterprise state.

It will be market-driven, efficient, responsive and effective;

And it will not cost a King's Ransom to achieve.

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The business entity tax was created in 2002 by State Legislators in order to fill the deficit gap in the state’s budget.

It is applied to over 118,000 businesses in Connecticut including Limited Liability Corporations, Limited Liability Partnerships, Limited Partnerships and S Corporations.

These companies must pay the $250 tax annually regardless of whether they earn a profit or even operate during the year.

This tax is a drain on the State’s economy and sends a negative message to small business owners and entrepreneurs. According to Secretary Bysiewicz in her news release dated January 23, 2008, small business owners are responsible for 80% of Connecticut’s new jobs and are instrumental in the growth of the state’s economy. This tax is a burden on those same small business owners who are struggling to grow their businesses and make ends meet. The $250 these businesses pay each year could pay an electric bill for a month, cover advertising costs, or be invested in a new product.

It is time to repeal the business entity tax in Connecticut. The state had a budget surplus last year and can no longer justify this additional tax on small business owners.

Tell your State legislators you want them to support Senate Bill 400, or any other measure that will eliminate the business entity tax.

House Democrats: 1-860-240-8585
Senate Democrats: 1-860-240-8600

House Republicans: 1-860-240-8700
Senate Republicans: 1-860-240-8800

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