I'd take the sociopathic comments over yours. You see, you "hope" his situation "gets better soon". The other posts you appear to have issues with seemed to have done much more to point out the potential mistakes the individual in question made, and brutal though they may have sounded, tried to give honest advise.

The other posters for the most part seemingly tried to do what they could about his situation, and given the limits inherent with this sort of forum, posting the truth as they see it is about all they can do. More than what you accomplished.

I would "hope" if I was in his situation, I would stop blaming outside forces and take some of that advise. It is never too late, as he seems to think "over 40" is old.

I would also add my sociopathic comment that he would do well to decide if he wants to be Mr. CEO or Joe Paycheck. I suspect some of his desire to recapture old glories is holding him back; after all, if he wants to go back into the job market as an employee with no experience, he has to start from the bottom. That is hard for anyone of any age to do, and the better his attitude, the better that will go.

CLI rules. Youtube loads so much faster on lynx.

Maybe?

And how can you have a rational discussion with someone who takes your comments out of context for a ad-hominum attack?

The lines you CHOSE NOT TO quote that I typed explained to you that you can't have a deduction off profit if you did not have the confidence to spend that on expanding your business - and the very fact is that with a crushing level of taxes, your profit is so miniscule that you can't save enough to have the confidence to hire a employee beyond what you can project on tax "writeoffs".

In other words it is about the cash flow! And taxes put a crimp on that so that planning for longer than a year or two at a time is simply not a good business risk.

Read it again! I make $10,000 in profit this year; I would have made $18,000 save for the fact I was in too high a tax bracket already. I could hire someone for minimum wage THIS YEAR if I had the $18K in my pocket. But instead I sock it under my mattress, hoping to save more next year. But many of the small businesses I also rely on are under the same constraints - their costs and prices go up, due to taxes and many other factors (many due to the increasing burdens of various governments - local, state, federal- and their unfunded mandates) - so that 10K I have under my matress is devalued; and then part of it goes to higher expenses OVER THIS YEAR. So I now have 8K under my matress.

I struggle for another 10K this year, and I am lucky to get it. Now I have 18K to spend on a new employee. YAY! Except now, if I am ethical at all, I realized I need to commit 19.5K to a new employee.

What the hell is irrational about that - that it includes real world concerns that your whining does not?

You are goddamn so full of it. I *was* dirt poor, a hispanic from a family in Southwest Texas; an American citizen, but with nothing to my name, I went from that to owning more than one IT consulting business. I got *out* of that game because the taxes were so crushing above a certain level of income I could not compete with the "rich" you seem to despise.

Perhaps I was too ambitious. If had opened up a car customizing business, a janitorial business, a lawn care business, I might be better off - since most of those businesses operate on CASH under the table to avoid SOME taxes; and I have seen a number of such businesses started by my own peers (read: hispanic, with poor family) and succeeded where I could not, since I could not operate on a cash basis.

So I work for the state now. Not a bad gig, but I would rather have the level of prosperity of those that paid the lower amount of taxes - about equal to what a fair flat tax - that partial evasion brings you.

Yes, evasion is illegal and wrong - but it shows what a lower tax rate can do to stimulate small business and create jobs. Something lost on you.

OK so you prefer to take money from employers and put it in the hands of Washington? As if the money they are not spending is under a mattress somewhere? No, it is in everything from money market funds to any number of investments - including treasuries. It is INVESTED and thus working as much as it is if it was SPENT.

- Some guy not posting anonymously, so you can't have the advantage of a wussy ad-hominum attack on the anonymous.

And I call bullshit on your misunderstanding of small business. Sole propritor in the USA? Then your personal taxes are your business taxes. The more profitable you are, the more taxes you pay. Yes, you write off expenses, but I said PROFIT is being eaten up by taxes - you know, the surplus that could be spent on hiring more folks, but since you remit it quarterly to yearly, you don't want to take the risk of a longer term commitment to a new employee. You can't sock away some of that profit to provide some cushion because after crushing taxes it does not amount to much.

Even small businesses under a corporate (s-corp, LLC, etc.) structure are under similar constraints; in theory a corporate structure can help you raise funds, but if you are a little local concern, good luck with that. Good luck with loans to hire someone as well.

Go do some homework and see how many employees are tied to small companies vs. large. What you advocate only plays into the hands of large corporate interests - are you a shill for them or just that uninformed? Only two real choices there.