Let Startups Start Out Tax-Free

Small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all private-sector employers, provide great innovation and are the most potent force to revive America’s economy, which cannot grow at a healthy pace without them.

Yet small businesses continue to face unnecessary obstacles to their success. Despite the adoption of new laws and regulations aimed at helping small firms, many still confront crushing regulatory burdens and struggle to get costly, time- consuming permits necessary to do business. They face overwhelming challenges trying to compete against more loosely regulated companies in other countries. As one of the largest insurers of small businesses, we see it every day, both anecdotally and in the data.

New small businesses, and the U.S. economy, would benefit significantly from a three-year incubation period during which they would face lower taxes, fewer regulatory requirements and fewer penalties for first-time and harmless paperwork violations...