NEWS | NSBA Sends Letter to Congress Urging Small-Business Priorities in Tax Bill

One, big, beautiful bill - NSBA urges Congress to remember common sense small-business polices as priorities headed into the reconciliation debates for the latest draft of the tax bill on the docket.

This week, NSBA President and CEO Todd McCracken sent a letter to Congress and Members of the House Ways and Means Committee ahead of their deep dives into the individual pieces of latest drafts of this session's major tax bill legislation:

"NSBA strongly supports the House Ways and Means Committee’s recently released reconciliation title, which includes language to ensure that critical tax provisions originally passed through the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) remain permanently available to Small Businesses," McCracken said. "If passed, this legislation would enable the majority of Small Businesses to continue benefitting from lower individual tax rates and crucially increases the amount of Qualified Business Income (QBI) deductible for these entrepreneurs under Section 199A up to 23 percent."

RELATED | NSBA Members Ratify Small-Business Priority Issues for 119th Congress at SBC 2025

"These are the two, single, largest priority issues for the small-business community, as voted on by NSBA membership as part of our biennial Small Business Congress hosted in Feb. 2025, and we are grateful to Chairman Smith and the Committee for delivering these massive victories for Small Business," McCracken continued. "Together, these measures would ensure small businesses do not bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden compared to their larger counterparts, providing long-term certainty for Main Street entrepreneurs. NSBA urges the full Ways and Means Committee to support this title and continue working to empower the U.S. small-business sector." 

Read the full letter here and below, and follow NSBA as we continue urging leaders on Capitol Hill and across Washington to prioritize common sense priorities for America's most important community - the small-business community.

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May 2025

The Honorable Jason Smith

Chairman

House Committee on Ways and Means

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable Richard E. Neal

Ranking Member

House Committee on Ways and Means

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Neal:

On behalf of the National Small Business Association (NSBA)—the nation’s oldest small

business advocacy organization, representing our membership of more than 65,000 and the

millions of owners and employees that comprise the U.S. small business sector—I am writing to

express our support for the recently-released pre-mark draft of the Ways and Means Title

providing for reconciliation pursuant to H.Con.Res.14, the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget

for Fiscal Year 2025.

Small companies are a big business. According to data from the Small Business Administration,

99.9% of all firms in the United States are small businesses. These companies employ nearly

half of all private sector workers and make up more than 43 percent of U.S. gross domestic

product (GDP).1 However, despite these massive figures, small businesses are significantly

more fragile than their large counterparts. Ostensibly small changes in taxes, regulations,

capital markets, labor markets, or the economy more broadly can drive thousands of

entrepreneurs to the brink of collapse.

Currently, thanks to the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), small businesses

do not bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden relative to large companies. The vast

majority of small businesses operate as pass-through entities, meaning that their income is

taxed at the individual level by their owners. Recognizing this, in drafting the TCJA, Congress

reduced small business taxes in two fundamental ways: lowering the income tax rates paid by

individual filers, and critically, allowing deductibility of up to 20 percent of Qualified Business

Income (QBI) earned via common pass-throughs under Section 199A. Taken together, these

provisions are the primary bulwark small businesses have against unfair taxes. Unfortunately,

while the TCJA recognized the importance of these provisions to main street businesses, it

neglected to make them permanent, meaning that America’s smallest businesses would have to

come back to Congress to keep their taxes from rising unfairly.

The recent pre-mark draft of the Ways and Means reconciliation title addresses this inequity,

making permanent both of these key provisions small companies have come to rely on, and

moreover increasing the value of the 199A QBI deduction for entrepreneurs.

I urge the Committee to support this draft of the Ways and Means Title, as well as other

legislative efforts that would reduce financial and administrative barriers to Main Street

competitiveness.

Thank you for your continued leadership in fostering an environment where small businesses

can operate, invest, and grow, and look I forward to continuing to work with you as a partner in

supporting the U.S. small business sector.

Sincerely,

Todd McCracken

President & CEO

National Small Business Association

cc: The Honorable Vern Buchanan

The Honorable Adrian Smith

The Honorable Mike Kelly

The Honorable David Schweikert

The Honorable Darin LaHood

The Honorable Jodey Arrington

The Honorable Ron Estes

The Honorable Lloyd Smucker

The Honorable Kevin Hern

The Honorable Carol Miller

The Honorable Greg Murphy

The Honorable David Kustoff

The Honorable Brian Fitzpatrick

The Honorable Greg Steube

The Honorable Claudia Tenney

The Honorable Michelle Fischbach

The Honorable Blake Moore

The Honorable Beth Van Duyne

The Honorable Randy Feenstra

The Honorable Nicole Malliotakis

The Honorable Mike Carey

The Honorable Rudy Yakym

The Honorable Max Miller

The Honorable Aaron Bean

The Honorable Nathaniel Moran

The Honorable Lloyd Doggett

The Honorable Mike Thompson

The Honorable John Larson

The Honorable Danny Davis

The Honorable Linda Sánchez

The Honorable Terri Sewell

The Honorable Suzan DelBene

The Honorable Judy Chu

The Honorable Gwen Moore

The Honorable Brendan Boyle

The Honorable Donald Beyer

The Honorable Dwight Evans

The Honorable Bradley Schneider

The Honorable Jimmy Panetta

The Honorable Jimmy Gomez

The Honorable Steven Horsford

The Honorable Stacey Plaskett

The Honorable Tom Suozzi

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