Issue Position: Economic Plan: A New Direction - Lower Taxes for Families and Small Businesses

Issue Position

Issue Position: Economic Plan: A New Direction - Lower Taxes for Families and Small Businesses

Middle class families and small businesses are the backbone of our economy. Jeanne Shaheen believes we should end tax breaks for special interests and instead lower taxes for small businesses and middle class families.

Jeanne Shaheen managed and was co-owner of a small retail business. She knows what it's like to struggle to meet a payroll. And as the former Governor of New Hampshire, she understands how important small business is to New Hampshire. 94 percent of New Hampshire companies have fewer than 100 employees and they employ close to half the state's labor force.

It is small business that creates jobs and drives new ideas and innovation, and it is middle class families that provide the workforce that has built our prosperity and the consumer spending that keeps our economy thriving.

In the Senate, Jeanne Shaheen will push to end special interest tax giveaways and redirect that money to lower taxes for small businesses and middle class families. She'll fight to:

* End special interest tax giveaways. Jeanne Shaheen will fight to end the massive tax subsidies for Big Oil, billionaire hedge fund managers, and companies that move jobs overseas.
* Lower health care costs. More than half of the estimated 47 million people across the country who lack health insurance live in a household headed by a small business owner or employee. Jeanne Shaheen is proposing a tax credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses that pay for at least 60 percent of their employees' health care premiums and are located in states like New Hampshire where insurance companies are barred from discriminating against businesses that have sick workers.
* Lower energy costs. Jeanne Shaheen believes we need to help small businesses and families insulate and weatherize their homes and purchase and install alternative energy systems like solar water heating systems and wood pellet stoves. Jeanne Shaheen supports extending existing credits on a long-term basis so that small businesses and families can plan and rely on them and to expand them.
* Lower child care and elder care costs. Middle class families are being squeezed by the costs of child care and taking care of aging parents. Small businesses know that the productivity of their workers goes up when they have good care for their children and aging parents. Jeanne Shaheen supports expanding the child care tax credit and creating a new elder care tax credit.
* Lower college tuition. Middle class families are struggling to pay for their kids' college education and small businesses need an educated work force. Jeanne Shaheen believes we need to simplify and expand tuition tax credits.
* Protect assets. Jeanne Shaheen supports a $7 million exemption level from the federal estate tax that would ensure small business owners and families could pass on their major assets to their children.
* Expand research and development. A proven way to stimulate private sector innovation is the federal research and development tax credit. Unfortunately, this tax credit expired at the end of last year and this summer. Jeanne Shaheen supports not just extending the federal R& D credit, but expanding it and making it permanent.

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