In the News

Small-Business Owners Are Coping, and Feeling Grateful for the Bright Spots
New York Times
September 27, 2009
“Business is not back to where it’s supposed to be, but we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel.”


Small Businesses Hold on Despite Economy
U.S. News & World Report
Matthew Bandyk
July 22, 2009
“The rate of self-employment among nonagricultural workers has barely budged in the face of the recession. In fact, the rate has slightly increased recently.”

Boomers Move To Self-Employment
Forbes.com
Ashlea Ebeling
July 2, 2009
“The migration of older workers to self-employment helps explain a seeming anomaly in the job numbers. Even as their unemployment rate grows, so too does the total employment of those 55 and older."

Jobless opt for entrepreneurship over job hunting
Miami Herald
Cindy Krischer Goodman
June 24, 2009
“The Kauffman Foundation reports interest in entrepreneurship is strong. One in four workers who have not found jobs are considering launching a business, a CareerBuilder.com survey says. The challenge is navigating the credit crisis to obtain start-up funds and having financial staying power.”

Recession Driving Start-Ups
New York Times
Scott A. Shane
June 16, 2009
“While the self-employment rate has been higher among people 65 and older for a while, the gap between the self-employment rate for the 65-plus age group and the next highest group (55 to 64) has grown.”

In tight job market, some teens start their own businesses
USA Today
Laura Petrecca
May 19 2009
"Amid shrinking job opportunities (the 16-to-19-year-old unemployment rate in April was 21.5%), many of his peers also are embracing their inner industrialist. The Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy doesn't break out statistics for teens and tweens, but says in 2006, there were 492,000 people younger than 25 who were self-employed. Figures for that year are the latest available."

Take This Dream and Crunch It
The Wall Street Journal
Karen Blumenthal
May 6 2009
"Self-employment is taxing. Gail Rosen, who runs her own accounting firm in Martinsville, N.J., says entrepreneurs in New Jersey pay taxes of 27% to 59% of their net income, including federal, state and payroll taxes. Still, she says, 'I am seeing more people than ever before start their own businesses.'"

Citi Foundation-Radio News Release
March 2009
“For the owners of very small businesses in the US, filing taxes, especially for the first time, can be complicated and expensive. That is why the Citi Foundation is strongly committed to supporting the Self-Employment Tax Initiative, a national program, which provides free tax assistance to low-income entrepreneurs. This effort has become increasingly critical as more unemployed and financially distressed households turn to self-employment to increase or supplement their income.”
-Pam Flaherty, President of the Citi Foundation

New York City Seeks Freelancer Unemployment Benefit
Bloomberg.com
Jeremy R. Cooke and Henry Goldman
March 2009
"New York City officials and a union that represents the self-employed will seek a new federal unemployment benefit for freelancers and the end of a state unincorporated business tax, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a speech to the Economic Club of New York." 

Weary of Looking for Work, Some Create Their Own
New York Times
Matt Richtel and Jenna Wortham
March 2009
"Plenty of other laid-off workers across the country, burned out by a merciless job market, are building business plans instead of sending out résumés. For these people, recession has become the mother of invention."

Tax-time tips for at-home workers
CNN.com
John Blake
March 2009
"Tax experts said there are no tax changes in the plan that specifically target people who work at home. Yet it does contain several provisions aimed at small businesses."

'"The big news here is that many credits are never applicable to self-employed individuals,' Villa said. 'This [Making Work Pay] credit is.'"

Credit Lines: The Road to Self-Employment
ACCION USA
Summer 2009
“Luis's road to self-employment was not easy. Once unemployed and homeless, Luis's life changed when he found work making bakery deliveries for a local company.”

Self-Employment Tax Initiative: Tax Preparation and Assets Formation Practices of Self-Employed Vermonters
Center for Rural Studies, University of Vermont
Michele C. Schmidt, MPA
July 2009
“This evaluation report examines the tax preparation practices and use of refunds and credits through a statewide survey and a survey of self-employed clients served by the VITA program offered by the five Vermont Community Action Agencies. This information is important to collect and analyze because tax refund dollars and credits, such as the EITC, provide an injection of cash flow to the average American family and are effective anti-poverty measures for low income families and individuals.”

Older Workers on the Move: Recareering in Later Life
AARP Public Policy Institute
Richard W. Johnson, Janette Kawachi, and Eric K. Lewis
April 2009
“Self-employment rates rise more sharply after retirement than after quits or layoffs. About 31 percent of career changers who describe themselves as having retired from their previous jobs move from working for someone else to working for themselves.”

Demographic and Economic Trends in Non-Metropolitan Nebraska
University of Nebraska Rural Initiative
Randy Cantrell
March 2009
"Their growing numbers and shrinking incomes leads one to suspect that increasing numbers of nonmetropolitan Nebraskans are turning to part-time self employment in order to augment their incomes from other sources, in a phenomenon that has been termed 'survival entrepreneurship.'"

Moving the Microenterprise Field Forward
Priorities, Strategies and Roles
FIELD/The Aspen Institute
February 13, 2009
“The Making Work Pay tax credit could serve as the centerpiece of a national campaign to channel more dollars to low-income microentrepreneurs (11 million of whom file business taxes yearly) and potentially funnel new clients seeking financial advice and business assistance to programs (two to three million low-income, self-employed are new filers every year).” 

Encouraging Entrepreneurship: A Microenterprise Development Policy Agenda
Community Investments
Joyce Klein and Carol Wayman
Winter 2008
"There are a number of opportunities for public policy to help microenterprise programs support emerging entrepreneurs as they contend with the current economic environment."

The Assets Agenda: Policy Options to Promote Savings and Asset Ownership by Low- and Moderate-Income Americans
New America Foundation
Reid Cramer, Rourke O’Brien, and Alejandra Lopez-Fernandini
September 2008
"Many low-income, self-employed households claim EITC benefits, which can in part offset the liabilities of the self-employment tax. A self-employment-specific tax credit could expand on this. It should be coupled with a new high-profile business and tax-literacy campaign, informing new sole proprietors about business taxationand asset-building options, and enabling them to make fully informed decisions about filing."

Microenterprises Give California's Economy a Boost
California Senate Office of Research
Rona L. Sherriff
July 2008
"Microenterprises—businesses with fewer than five employees as well as sole proprietorships with no employees—have made impressive gains since 2000: the net job creation of these 'micro' businesses in California is six times the total of net jobs created by the state’s larger businesses."