Husted Touts Online Business Tools to NFIB
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The state’s new online tool for business registration was live for only 90 minutes when a woman in Bowling Green registered her company with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office -- at 1:30 a.m.
The system went live a week ago Friday, and since then hundreds of companies have used the system, Secretary of State Jon Husted said Wednesday.
“It’s worked out very well for us,” he remarked. The online registration saves money and is convenient for business owners to use, allowing business owners to register corporate filings 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said
Husted addressed the Youngstown Area Council of the National Federation of Independent Business. The meeting was held at City Machine Technologies Inc., which the Ohio secretary of state toured following the meeting.
Business filings hit a record in 2012 and 2013 filings are moving ahead of last year’s pace, he reported. “So things are moving in the right direction” but have "got to get a lot better,” he said.
“I always like to visit with small business owners not only to share with them what’s happening in my office and in state government but tp hear what they have to say about the business environment and what we can do to make it easier for them,” he said.
Among the issues discussed at the NFIB meeting were concerns related to implementation of the Affordable Care Act, government regulation and efforts to secure uniformity among municipal tax codes in the state.
“A lot of small businesses are particularly concerned about health care costs and the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the cost of regulation,” Husted said. Such issues “are the kinds of things that make it tough to operate a small business,” he remarked.
“What’s most frustrating to us is that [the Affordable Care Act] has done absolutely nothing to contain costs,” said Roger Geiger, vice president and executive director of NFIB/Ohio.
Turning to taxes, Geiger said Ohio is one of fewer than 10 states that permit municipalities to collect income tax. “We have over 600 taxing jurisdictions. Each operates by their own rules, their own regulations, their own processes, and we are asking for standardization” he said. While the state take is about in the middle among the states, adding the municipal tax “puts Ohio off the charts.”
NFIB/Ohio is working through the General Assembly on some type of reform that would preserve municipalities’ right to collect income tax under home rule, but Geiger acknowledged push-back on the issue is bipartisan. “This is a fiefdom fight. Municipalities are deeply resistant to any type of change,” he remarked.
Municipal tax reform is “one of those insider-type issues “that isn’t going to be discussed at the supermarket but is “a really important issue to the small number of people who have to do business,” Husted said.
Husted was critical of members of his own party in Washington over the approach some took to address the Affordable Care Act, triggering a government shutdown and near-default that ended hours after Husted spoke yesterday.
“Honestly, we have to be smarter. We have to have a strategy,” he said. “I am a conservative Republican but there are some conservative Republicans that just want to fight on emotion and not on strategy. They don’t have a plan. But you can’t just say, ‘I’m going to take my ball and go home.’ That doesn’t work. You got elected to govern. You’ve got to outsmart the other side to figure out how you’re going to do this.”
If in Washington, Husted said he would be talking about the failures associated with the Affordable Care Act and how they need to be changed, how government is spending more than it is taking in and how the tax code needs to be changed. “You can build your entire argument around those three things right now and have something that’s worth fighting for and actually do some good in the world. But to pretend like you’re going to end the Affordable Care Act, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “The president’s going to be there for three more years.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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