Washington, D.C.— In the final days before going home to campaign, Congress passed the Small Business Jobs Act, which has now been signed into law by President Obama as Public Law 111-240. The law has a number of provisions which green industry businesses might find helpful, as well as a few revenue-raising measures to beware. Two Republican Senators – George Voinovich of Ohio and George LeMieux of Florida – joined with Democrats to support passage of the bill. American Nursery & Landscape Association president Bob Lyons of Sunleaf Nursery, Madison, Ohio, said after the Senate vote, “At a time when small businesses in Ohio and across America are struggling, a bill like this shouldn’t be a partisan fight, and we thank Sen. Voinovich for his leadership.”
Examples of positive provisions include:
- An extension and expansion of Section 179 direct expensing, which allows qualifying businesses to write off the cost of certain capital investments in the year they are acquired.
- An extension of “bonus depreciation.” The new law extends the additional, first-year 50 percent depreciation for qualifying property purchased and placed in service in 2010
- Cell phones—the new law removes cell phones and similar devices from the list of items that require taxpayer business-purpose substantiation so their cost can be deducted or depreciated like other business property, without onerous recordkeeping requirements.
- Various measures to increase small business lending and loans.
While some of the bill’s provisions may be helpful, green industry businesses should also beware that the new law substantially increases penalties for failure to timely file information returns to the IRS (such as Form 1099). These provisions are intended to raise revenues needed to offset the cost of other parts of the bill.
Further details on the bill are available to ANLA Members in the ANLA Knowledge Center at: http://www.anla.org/knowledgecenter/index.cfm?ID=2304&type=html