The enterprise strikes back!

Small business owners gathered at the 2008 National Small Business Summit held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Guest speaker William D. Novelli, Chief Executive Officer of American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) doled out alarming statistics saying that only a fifth of American workers have a defined pension plan and only half of all Americans have money in their retirement fund. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, the woman who is recognized as the first of 78 million baby boomers, just received her Social Security retirement benefit.

The opening general session broke out into four concurrent sessions, namely ‘Coping with Immigration Crackdowns’, ‘10 Ways a Small Business Owner Can Avoid Legal Trouble’, ‘Planning for Future Tax Increases’ and ‘Elements of eBay Selling Success’.

Among the speakers at the tax legislation session was Mary Baker from the Internal Revenue. She discussed the Tax Extenders Bill which is meant to extend tax relief to businesses. At the moment, there is a debate as to whether the bill should be paid for or not. Forty-one Republican members from the Senate do not support paying for the Extenders Bill.

Beth Milito, Senior Executive Council of Nation Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Small Business Legal Center spoke on how small businesses can avoid legal trouble. She emphasized that far too many small business owners get sued because of ignorance of the law. Employees should be trained on anti-discrimination laws. Milito said small business owners spend 1.7 billion hours on tax compliance.