Ideas. Seven ideas to be exact. Seven ideas to help private employers start, run and grow their businesses. The Pro-Employer Agenda, with its seven ideas to stimulate economic growth, stands in contrast to the ballooning, pro-big government policies taking root in Washington D.C. and making it increasingly difficult for small businesses to survive. Support our Pro-Employer Agenda. Join Employer Nation today.

Lower Taxes on Small Businesses

Exclude permanently from taxation 20% of the income earned by firms with fewer than 500 employees.

Impact: Small businesses will have the capital needed to invest and expand their operations, creating jobs and attracting investment for start-up businesses.

Encourage Investment

Pass a five-year extension of “bonus” depreciation and special expensing of new capital investments.

Impact: Investment by domestic innovators in new plant-and-equipment creates domestic jobs for Americans with the nation’s most thriving employers and most promising entrepreneurs.

Taxpayer Choice Act

Allow taxpayers to pay their income taxes by filling out a one-page form using a simple, two-tiered tax rate: 10% on incomes under $100,000 and 25% on incomes over $100,000.

Standard deductions and personal exemptions stay in place but nearly all other tax-code deductions would go away. Taxpayers could either choose this simple tax plan or continue to pay according to the current tax structure with its more than 17,000 pages of code.

Impact: Tax simplification gets consumers spending and investing again by allowing taxpayers to keep more of their money and save time.

Lower Taxes on Manufacturing

Reduce taxes paid on income earned from factories and manufacturing plants.

Earnings from manufacturing in the U.S. should be taxed at a rate no higher than 25%. China and Ireland tax income from their factories at 17% and 12.5% respectively. The U.S. must consider matching those rates to compete globally and keep more jobs at home. Should we keep the tax rate on manufacturing the second highest in the world at 39.3%*? Reduce it to 25%? Or lower it equal to China’s 17% or Ireland’s 12.5%?

Impact: By reducing taxes on manufacturers, factories will remain globally competitive and more employees will be hired.

Repeal Gift and Death Tax

Permanently repeal the federal estate and gift taxes.

The gift and death taxes were lowered in the tax-relief plans passed in 2001 and 2003, but will return to high levels in 2011. The government should not double-tax families and estates at the time of a death. Likewise, taxpayers should have the right to give as much as they want to whomever they wish after having paid taxes on their income.

Impact: Business owners could pass on their assets to their heirs – allowing them to keep family farms and businesses within the families that created them without forcing their estates to sell in order to pay death taxes.

Improve Patent Office

Reform the Patent and Trade Office by allowing the Patent Office to keep all the fees it generates.

This will not only improve compliance and protect intellectual property, but also reduce the cost and complexity of the patent system. Helping the patent office to operate more efficiently will also encourage inventors to patent their ideas in America – helping the U.S. to retain its worldwide lead in innovation.

Impact: More inventors will file their patents in the U.S. for protection from uncompensated imitation, keeping our economy on the cutting-edge of technology and innovation.

Eliminate Unnecessary Regulations

Eliminate regulations that no longer benefit the public or produce results.

There should be periodic and routine review of regulations in a sunset process, repealing regulations that no longer serve a purpose or have the desired results.

Impact: Business owners can concentrate more on serving their customers and training employees rather than making sure their offices properly respond to redundant or out-of-date regulations.