BizSugar.com › News › Candidates Stand Apart on Tax Policy Affecting Small Business

Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain have advanced a broad array of tax proposals that are complex, hard to understand, and on many points, difficult to compare. But the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two nonpartisan research organizations, recently published a study that provides the best analysis yet of the candidates' respective positions.

As the study pointedly notes, tax and fiscal policy will loom large in the next president's domestic policy agenda. Nearly all of the tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration will expire at the end of 2010. Without changes, the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) will engulf a growing number of middle-income households, and government must still address looming funding shortfalls in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In addition, both candidates have pledged to address the nation's health insurance crisis. All of these issues directly affect small businesses.