During the election process voters go back and forth amongst each other on why each candidate would be more appropriate to hold the position of President then the other. It's a never ending debate that for the most part has no positive outcome. The realistic nature is that you will vote for who you'll vote for and from there you must accept the fact that the candidate elected is your President for the next four years.
My point here is not related to why one candidate is better than the other, its actually to find something beneficial that each candidate can bring to the table for the business environment (I'm choosing business simply because its in the theme of this blog topic).
Growing up [and still today] I heard countless stories from friends, family, colleagues and random strangers on how so and so was such a great President and because of him we have [fill in the blank]. Some Presidents allowed us to get into this country, other created peace, some a booming economy, whatever it is you can always find a President that did something fantastic or was at least in office while something great happened.
This brings me to my point, I was recently going through a comparison of issues between Obama and McCain. I came across their views regarding Taxing Business. Without a doubt from a corporate perspective, McCain wins in his want of decreasing the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. However, Obama had something that I really wanted to mention from the standpoint of a budding entrepreneur:
Exempt investors from the capital gains tax on their investments in small businesses and startups if they made their investment when a small company was valued below a certain threshold. That threshold has yet to be defined.Now this is clearly more beneficial in the early stages of a business (whereas McCain is more geared to profitable corporations). Lets say you as an Angel are investing $100,000 into a business that is valued at $1M (for argument's sake lets say the threshold is $1M in valuation for your capital gains to be tax exempt). Lets again pretend that in a matter of five years the said company sells for $15M. You've made yourself a tidy $1.5M on a $100K investment, better yet, you pay no taxes on your $1.4M in capital gains! Depending on the state this can be a savings of $300k-$500K (rough estimate). Not to mention there are some states that will allow you to have tax credits or deduction for investing in such early stage deals. Unfortunately Texas and Georgia are not included in those states.
Morale of the story is, if your candidate does not win the election there may always be a benefit to you in one or more the different initiatives the other candidate is trying to push. As always look for niches and work your way hard into them!
Anything in particular that draws your attention to a candidate for one particular reason or another? Lets stick to business topics for the time being...
3 comments:
That's the key, WIFM, What's in it for me. In terms of helping run the Entrepreneurs Society, we've got one priority - what are they doing for startup and growing ventures.
Very interesting to hear what the Obama vs. McCain business outlook is. I'll do a little more research, but if what you say is correct, it's almost a complete no brainer who to choose.
Many have criticized me on being only focused on business issues, but it's like anything. If you don't have healthcare and you are in the hospital paying the bills, that's going to be you're #1 issue.
Mine is obviously helping ventures with everything, and biggest issue for the startups is raising capital. This would be a fantastic way to encourage more angels to come up from the woodwork.
If you're bored check out: http://jpjames.com/wordpress/?p=92 an article I wrote about advances in technology and where humanity is progressing towards.
Great start! Looking forward to reading more :)
I'm curious to know how business will be effected by each candidates energy policies. I hope that whomever ends up in office takes a proactive approach towards motivating businesses to be energy efficient.
Post a Comment